Los Angeles Archives

A Series of Experiments

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:23 am

This is a continuation of the previous post, thoughts on living in Los Angeles after two years.

The other day I was hunting through my closet and I realized: I had nothing to wear. I felt a familiar flash of junior high awkwardness, tearing through dresser drawers looking for something acceptably cool. At the time, I think I settled on a baggy polo and a pair of Dockers.

Aka the epitome of pretty-lame.

On this go-around, it wasn’t my level of awesomeness hindering me (a level which clearly has grown exponentially since high school.) It was my experiment in minimalism two years ago, where I gave away everything I owned save for few choice selections. It was an adjustment, but well-suited for my goals at the time.

Now that I’m living in Los Angeles? Not so much.

Annoyed as I am though, I think if I didn’t put myself through that, I wouldn’t be standing here in my Culver City apartment, the one besotted with Craigslist furniture and a dish set that sort of showed up in our cabinets one day. I couldn’t grow resentful at the thought of sacrifice because I had nothing left to give up. I couldn’t grow jealous over things I didn’t have because I didn’t have anything. If I didn’t make those choices, the thought of moving across the country would have seemed more daunting.

Looking at life through this lens, it feels like all events leading up to now are just a sequence of experiments, one building upon another. Minimalism was an experiment in sacrifice. Summer days spent working in Chinese restaurants as a teenager were lessons in work ethic. Solo traveling was an experiment in being comfortable in my own shoes.

Even writing a blog, is an experiment in making myself responsible for my words. Each post is an experiment in hitting “publish.”

I mentioned how the idea that Los Angeles is feeling less like an experiment, and gradually receding into what feels like life. In its wake I’m left with one idea: experiments sometimes fail. They almost always end. Score isn’t kept by how many tallies you have in one column or the other, but rather, how close are you to the life you imagined for yourself?

That’s the goal of these experiments in our lives: not the individual successes or failures, but whether the sum of their parts brings you where you want to be.

Photos Credit: glencm

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Two Years in Los Angeles

Last updated on May 4th, 2018 at 07:06 pm

My two-year anniversary with Los Angeles approaches. Living here was an experiment, drawn out on cocktail napkins and e-mails before throwing my life into a car and arriving with no job, no apartment, and no clue. And as much as there is to love about LA, looking around at the trappings of my life, it’s obvious I never thought of it as more than an experiment.

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Headshot

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

Displayed on his laptop was the Facebook photo of someone I barely recognized. His was a good-old boy face, with clean features and a fresh haircut. He carried himself with forced-casual posture — shoulders back and spine slightly hunched — and it screamed American Eagle catalog.

Teddy and Kathy laughed at his modeling photos as they passed the bowl back and forth, him clicking and changing the picture every other toke. Teddy gestured towards the screen. “Look at what Ky’s been up to.”

Ky was a server who started working at the Thai restaurant just before I left. We didn’t talk much: I remember he seemed real country, real green. He mentioned getting into acting and modeling. I could barely place his face on the Photoshopped Malibu Ken in front of me, who went through a wardrobe change and pose shift with every mouse click, the only ubiquitous feature the plastic smile on his face:

Here he is, wrapped in a scarf!

Now, flexing his abdominal muscles!

Wow! It looks like Ky’s ready for a night on the town! Let’s go, Barbie!

They laughed and pointed and laughed some more, half in good-nature, and the other half, not so quite. “Hey, I mean, good luck to him,” Kathy said.

“Yeah, hope he gets something out of these pictures,” Teddy added. Like these dismissive platitudes negated their ridicule, or concealed the resentment laced twixt every laugh, every comment, every puff of smoke exhaled in Ky direction.

I remember doing the exact same thing, once upon a time, while visiting my friends Jenny Beth and Danielle, in Nashville. Late one night and bored, we started flipping through the 30-pictures-deep Facebook modeling album of a former CTY co-worker. He proudly posted a short prelude, explaining that he never considered modeling, but a friend suggested it and he “loved the results.”

The “results” were far more over the top than Ky’s photos, and included super-mega-bonus suggestive captions, like “wanna get nailed?” as if wearing cut-off jean shorts, an open flannel shirt, and a firm grip on the shaft of a hammer wasn’t suggestive enough. Or if clutching a toy jack hammer directly in front of your crotch didn’t slap you across the face with a laundry list of double entendre, one was provided for ease of reference (“I’d hammer you, too.”) We laughed and we pointed and we laughed, until we went through the entire album, trying out each caption in our own sexy voice.

Half in good nature. Half not so quite.

This time around with Ky’s photos, it wasn’t as amusing. I walked out of the room, and the click of the mouse and more laughter followed me into the hallway. Their gaiety hit too close to home. It was a low blow, making the subject of their ridicule someone who was getting started in entertainment. Be certain that anytime you attempt something difficult, something without a proven record, people are lining up their bets against you and laughing as they do it. Rare are the people who wish you the best of luck, and mean it.

Which is helpful, in its own way. Ridicule weeds out those without the gumption to stick it out for the long run. If you can’t handle some razzing at stage one, it’s unlikely you’ll have the staying power to last the seasons, when ridicule melts to begrudging acceptance, and eventually, blooms to admiration.

Still. “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.”

Photo Credit: Shannon Huppin

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Spin

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 03:55 pm

There’s a crazy homeless lady yelling obscenities outside my window. I hate callously tossing around words like “crazy” and “homeless”– that could be someone’s grandmother outside – but she’s got a schizophrenic gait to her speech, see-sawing from sing-song to Banshee. That’s the “crazy.” And she parked her shopping cart of worldly possessions next to my car, and is using the rear end bumper as a roof. That’s “homeless.”

Teddy suggests we get out there and tell her to move, but he doesn’t read horror scripts all day, so he doesn’t know any better. There’s always that guy in slasher flicks who approaches the seemingly vulnerable creature, disguised as an old lady or the ubiquitous little girl (equally ubiquitously played by Chloe Grace Moretz.) His hand is outstretched, like he’s about to pet a baby bird. He’s hunched over, his eyebrows furrowed, and in your head you’re screaming “No! Don’t do it! It’s a trick! She’s going to bite your face off!” but he inches closer and closer, unconcerned with your pleas because you don’t possess telepathy and he is inside a television.

He gently touches the old lady, and…

Nothing happens. He smiles…

Right before she rips his face in half.

I will not be this guy.

The alternative to asking the crazy homeless lady to move is realizing that she may be obnoxious, but she’s not doing nobody harm. We should just stay inside our warm, safe apartment, with running water and electricity and cell phones, counting our blessings.

Then get on the cell phone and call the police, and ask them to move the crazy homeless lady.

I prefer this option, though I’m not sure what good it’d do. In Los Angeles, there’s this “live and let live” attitude towards the homeless and panhandlers that still escapes me. There’s a panhandler I regularly pass, stationed right where the “10” empties onto National Blvd. Her scraggly brown hair is tied back in a ponytail, and tucked into her USC sweat shirt. Every time I get gas or groceries, she’s working that corner, though her specific duties vary. Sometimes she’s got her cup in hand, walking down the long line of cars waiting for the light. Other times, she’s flirting with the homeless wheelchair guy, or drinking a 40 out of a brown paper bag.

Yesterday, I saw her at Starbucks, ordering a Frappuccino. It was half-off, part of the Happy Hour special they were running, but still.

Across our apartment, a woman parks her van loaded with cans and bottles she’s collected inside an outdoor garage. Like others, she makes her living hunting recyclables. I never gave it any thought until I overheard her conversation with another professional recycler. “People look down at me,” he said, “but shit, I ain’t working for no man. I make my own money, and I make my own hours.”

He’s not a recyclables hunter; he’s an entrepreneur.

And what one might refer to it as panhandling, others call hustling.

In upstate New York, you throw an empty bottle on the ground, it’s littering. In Los Angeles, you know it’s going to get picked up: so you call it charity.

In many American cities, employing someone at no pay to keep the coffee machine going and fetching printouts is called slave labor. Here it’s an internship.

If that’s not spin, then I don’t know what is. It permeates from every crevice of our lives, a byproduct of being concerned with how others perceive you. Spin is everywhere and it’s still spreading, bleeding over Ethernet cables and wireless routers, diffusing from our real lives to our online lives and back again. There’s merit in developing the ability to spin, especially when it’s your Facebook or blog account that notifies others of your engagement, your job promotion, or what you ate for lunch. It’s more fun (and easier on the ego) to spin a post about triumphing over adversity, versus admitting this recent slump of failures has got you frustrated and rapidly losing faith. And why admit you got your heartbroken when a simple “In a relationship with…” toggle box explains it all, and the only thing left to do is untag your former significant other out of your life?

Spin grants us a glossy veneer to cover blemishes. With a click, any defeat can be turned to victory, any failure, a success. “Be all you can be,” has given way to “be all you’re perceived to be.” This power comes with the very real possibility of losing sight of who we actually are and what we actually feel. Until one day we find ourselves out on the street, babbling schizophrenics all, torn somewhere between our real lives and digital selves.

Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon

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Advice

Last updated on March 9th, 2019 at 04:03 pm

“My catchall, general advice to everyone who moves out to Los Angeles is this: if there’s anything else you can do, anything else that’s your calling, go do that instead. It’s a pat answer,” he admitted, “but this is just too hard…”

Which immediately raises the question: why is it hard? Because people will be mean to you? Because the hours stretch long and your social life sums to nil? Because you’ll be overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated – conditions your mother conditioned you into believing you’d skip right over because you were a unique snowflake?

It also prompts the follow-up question: hard compared to what?

When did the resultant response to“too hard” lead to “so don’t try?” Giving up because something is too hard – you attempted, drew conclusions based on the results, and decided to invest your time elsewhere – there’s no shame in that.

But too hard to even attempt?

Easily the worst attempt at advice I’ve ever come across.

Everyone’s journey, — from love to career to family to personal — is just that: personal. To compare how one person experiences joy, pain, and hardship to another is a fruitless exercise. The brilliant academic mind is a tortured soul in social situations that the social butterfly who battles bulimia excels in, while the bum standing outside her bathroom window scrounges through garbage cans of the single mother raising three kids alone because her addict husband couldn’t kick the habit he picked up when he in law school.

Who’s to say what’s “too hard?”

Pursuing your dreams is hard – that’s why they’re dreams; because you gots to stretch and reach and scratch and claw and lie and steal and cheat for them. If you make a living creating art, hustling for every cent, sure, it’s probably safe to say your path is filled with more struggle than someone happy with their nine to five.

But that does not make you a unique snowflake.

Contrary to popular belief, you still are not the hardest working person in your town, or your field. You’re probably not the hardest working person on your block.

Nor does it give you the privilege of passing off bullshit as your own sage adage for the temporary high of superiority and ten seconds of a hard dick you get at the thought of helping a fellow artist with your brilliant insight into the Holllywood machine.

It’s irresponsible to assume fragility, not strength. Individuals are more resilient than they’re given credit for, and we have to make a choice: to be the person who pushes the resiliency of others beyond their limits, beyond what they thought possible…

Or the person who convinces them that, “yes, there’s your limit. Your reach meets your grasp.”

Gotta stretch, baby. Gotta dream. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t.

But at least you won’t leave this earth wondering what would have happened if you never took your shot.

Which would be the hardest thing of all.

Photo Credit: muizei

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Sell Yourself

Last updated on March 24th, 2017 at 06:52 pm

You could tell he was a best-selling author the moment he stepped on the elevator. It was in the smile: the smug smile of success of someone who needs success to smile. If that didn’t tip you off, then the collared shirt with his name embroidered over his right tit and the words “Best-Selling Author” embroidered over his right tit did.

His beard resembled a furry cat, a tawny feline that perched onto his chin years ago and never left. Instead, the pussiness seeped into his pores and oozed throughout his persona: the entitlement in his strut, the condescension in his tone – he was a self-satisfied pussy alright, content with a belly rub, maybe a broken-winged butterfly to bat around. Behind every. last. word. was an inner sigh of contentment. An, “Ahhh… it’s me, bitches!” right as a Swizz Beatz beat dropped and looped endlessly in his head.

He was the kind of person you’d meet at wine ‘n cheese parties. He’d listen politely to whatever you said, nodding too often, after every. last. word. because that’s what he learned in his interpersonal communications class. Except the glazed look in his eyes and the superior smile itching to break out over his face gave the game up, and finally you’d pop the unavoidable question: so what do you do?

And he’d one-up your every utterance with his trump card, his bitch of spades:

“Me?” dripped with false modesty and fake surprise. As if he’s never heard the question before. “I’m a best-selling author.”

Then you nod and say something to the effect of “how fabulous,” though you may never have used the word “fabulous” in your life, before sipping the box wine and nibbling on some stinky Cabrales. You’d re-read the words on his shirt.

“I never would have guessed,” you’d say.

Promote, market, sell yourself. You gots to do it if you’re going to make it, yeah? Chalk one up to naivety, but there’s got to be some finesse to it, a balance between creating buzz and hawking yourself on the street corner with the name “Kandy Kane” screened onto your booty shorts. The line’s a blur at the best of times, and a beer-goggled squiggle at the worst, when wearing a shirt with your resume embroidered on it is an acceptable practice in branding. Seems the line will continue getting fuzzier and fuzzier, too, as this generation emerges into the market, a generation brought up believing they are all unique snowflakes, and encouraged to tout the specificity of their successes and talents with alarming ease.

The problem with this is you’re only as good as the hype until you begin to believe it. At that point, it’s all downhill, because the second you start believing you “made it,” the drive that got you there begins to diminish. Humility and humbleness won’t blow you up like a youtube video gone viral, but they’ll continue pushing your talents long after any glim and glamour has worn off. And no matter how loud the marketing gimmick, it can’t match the volume of the art you make or the content you create. If these don’t say enough about you, nothing will.

Photo Credit: Famelab Italia

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No One’s Listening

Last updated on November 2nd, 2021 at 05:09 pm

Jeff sat. He was new blood. A transplant. Like a minted quarter, shiny and uncirculated and fresh to death.

Seated around him, three individuals who arrived a month previous. All whom sang the song and danced the dance required to get established in this town. He had every opportunity to pop questions, to mine for nuggets that’d make his transition easier. Finding even one morsel would make the effort worthwhile. Competition’s fierce, and that one byte of data might separate him from permanent resident status or a return ticket in three months with nothing but a story.

And he squandered the op. Instead, he talked. He shared his glorious triumphs, scheduling appointments from a league away, blowing in with the wind and blowing the hair back on his interviewers for his unpaid internship. He glowered about the bigger fish to come.

If you’ve heard “Los Angeles is a lonely city,” that’s why. Many people talk. Few listen.

The interaction, where one person opens their mouth, sound comes out, then the other person gets their chance, often isn’t dialogue around here. They’re two separate conversations, tangentially related. No interplay; just moments of waiting for the person to breathe or pass out, so the other person knows it’s their turn.

Does the entertainment business attract people like this? Or does it bring out this quality in them? Everyone’s looking to make it, on their own dime, sweat, tears – smart, brave souls, most – and that pursuit engages most of their energies. Their hustle consumes every morsel of attention. Any conversation not about them or their feats or their struggle is of no interest. Their attention wanes in the time a youtube video buffers. Eyes glaze in the 20 seconds post posing an obligatory question.

In the trenches of this environment, a battle rages. It’s a war of soul, an internal conflict when you wake up every morning. The battle is reminding yourself to be sympathetic and kind. To be human. To remember when it’s all over, all anyone has is what they gave back to the world.

Most days, it’s a losing battle. Platitudes and sage words don’t advance careers. They don’t pay rent. They don’t take away the loneliness.

How long can you look out for others who aren’t looking out for you?

How do you work hard and honest when most would take any edge you give them?

Offer up your soul and they’ll dump on it. Eventually, you get tired of cleaning shit up.

Seen one way, it’s a travesty to acknowledge you’ll walk away from this town jaded.

Seen another way, it’s an opportunity. An opportunity to stand out by being the person who listens, the person who looks out for others as much as he looks out for himself.

First thought that comes to mind is “it can’t be done.” This is a business built on relationships, but it’s also built on smoke and mirrors, on nepotism, and big deals brokered and broken in old boy’s clubs. And trying to rise against that with, what – kindness? heart? – is an act of madness.

Except this is a town where game changers also emerge from the mist. Not in the same abundance as the people who don’t listen, but they’re present. People who were told “you can’t do that,” or “nobody does that,” and do it anyway, because they believed in something more than their own personal advancement. Because they saw an opportunity the rest of the cogs were too busy churning to notice.

Of course, it’s hard to be one of these people. A game changer.

Why else would so few do it?

Photo Credit: thesohnzone

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Internships – Part Two: First Interview

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:22 am

He glanced at the resume. Read it aloud, a clear as Ever indication this was time primero he laid eyeball to C.V. ink.

“Shogun Sushi,” mumble mumble, “Rutgers University,” mumble mumble, then stopped. Where they always stopped. Asked what they always asked. “What’d you do for Maxim Magazine?”

Eric offered one takeaway, other than his narrative on the crapshoot that is procuring an internship: “Be clear about what you want to do. The last guy they passed on because he said he didn’t know what he wanted.”

So when he posed his question – what do you want to do in this industry? – he got the straight.

Be a screenwriter. No if’s, and’s, or um’s.

At which point Matt concluded the interview, and offered two-penny thoughts on the best path to becoming a screenwriter, none which involved his internship program.

“I see this internship as a stepping stone for people,” he said. “I don’t want someone who’s going to do this, then take a position for $38,000 a year at Chase Bank or something.” He followed this back-handed back hand with suggestions how a Chase bank teller should go about it.

“Spend a year just focused on your writing, and reading great scripts. You don’t have to be a part of this program to do that.”

Or –

“Take a class on screenwriting at UCLA extension. Learn about the structure – that’s the best way for you to become a screenwriter.”

Or –

“Spend a year working desk at an agency. Learn from the movers and shakers. You’ll spend 80 hours a week there your first year. Probably won’t write much. But you’ll come out with contacts, and with luck, get somebody to represent you.” At which point he realized how contradictory his advice was, and tried fobbing it off with – “you’re well-spoken, you dress well, and you’re a sharp guy. You look like an agency kid to me.”

Mad-Libs are more specific.

Twenty minutes of this. Followed with some standing, a warm smile, and hand shaking hand. All formalities – the interview finished 18 minutes ago. But not nobody wastes your time unless you let him; if the crash ‘n burn looks top gun, best aim for great balls of fire.

Matt, I respect your opinion. I respect everything you just said. But I want to leave no doubt in your mind that I want to be in contention for this internship.

Finally. A genuine smile to replace the smirk. “Then you are.”

Never heard from him again.

Continue to Internships – Part Three: Scorecard

Return to Internships – Part One: Getting an Interview

Photo Credit: Enri Endrian

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Internships – Part One: Getting an Interview

Last updated on November 2nd, 2021 at 05:09 pm

“It’s rolling the dice,” Eric said, “trying to get an interview for one of these internships.”

On the second day of his internship, his boss presented him a stack of resumes. “He told me, ‘go through these, find five candidates to interview for the last internship spot.’”

“When you’re given 50 resumes and cover letters, and told to get it down to five, you look for any reason to discount someone. That’s how I eliminated the first half: I looked for any reason to not consider them. Typo – gone. Poor formatting – gone.

“One guy, trying to be funny in his cover letter, wrote he was looking for ‘slave labor employment.’ It was cute – he was eliminated. Another girl put a suggestive picture of herself as the background to her resume – gone.

“That got me down to 25 resumes, at which point it’s even more of a crap shoot, not less.” All of the obvious rejects were already sitting in the trash, he explained. With those that remained, how many were likely to jump out as the “right” person for the position?

Very few.

“It came down to my mood, or the little details I noticed in the resumes. ‘Oh, you went to a Big 10 School? Okay, you’re in.’ Or, ‘You went to Texas State? I like your football team, you’ll get interviewed.’ Any insignificant detail can make the candidate stand out, and it’s completely subjective to the person going through the resumes.” Eric shook his head. “Not to mention any subconscious biases or prejudices.

“I chose three resumes and realized they were all girls. And I’m not going to hand my boss five female candidates, so I eliminated the remaining girls from the stack of resumes. Which isn’t fair to them; anyone of them could have been more qualified than the three already picked, but that’s just the way it goes.

“It just makes me realize more that if you want to get somewhere in this industry, you have to know people. Submitting your resume to a database of resumes – like I did before – is fruitless. The people in charge want recommended people; they’re aware what a shot in the dark the hiring process is. If they pick a random, they could wind up with a psycho nobody likes. If they hire based on your recommendation, at least they’re removing the ‘random’ element. Everyone benefits when you hire based on a recommendation.”

Continue to Internships – Part Two: First Interview

Photo Credit: MindField Group

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Restaurant Work in Los Angeles

Last updated on May 5th, 2018 at 11:23 am

“Sounds like a no-brainer,” Teddy said. He reclined deeper into the sofa, sunlight splashing off the cigarette drooped from his fingertips. “What did you come out to Los Angeles for? You didn’t come out to serve, or to learn more about the restaurant business. You came to write. So take whichever job will help you do that.”