Little Fish in New Waters

This weekend I had a great adventure! I met about 20 cousins I have never seen before, and went to parts of California I have never been to before...including the infamous Rock!!! That's right...Alcatraz.

Pictures and details are forthcoming! (I just need to download them). I got back into town tonight and was welcomed by my two sweet kitties, Bundles and Leo.

I missed my bed and my guitar so much. I played on my guitar until my fingers ached. Only 2 1/2 weeks until I head home for Christmas- back to Georgia. Thanks to my wonderful family (Robin) for the ticket!!! It's one of the best presents I could receive. I've never been five months without seeing my family, to my knowledge.

I'm curious as to how others spent their Thanksgiving. Robin, how was Mississippi?

More Little Fish Updates

So what have I been up to lately, artistically speaking, that is? Here are some tidbits:


I met today with Antonio Sacre, an awesome bi-lingual storyteller. I first met him at the Jonesborough International Storytelling Festival in Tennessee in 2007. He lives out here and makes his living telling stories, and I wanted to meet with him and pick his brain about just that. He was very generous with his brain, and gave me lots of info and advice, so this goal will be taking a priority over certain other artistic projects. I need to get my content ready, get a website and some video ready, and market myself to schools and libraries. I already have some content in the form of folktales. As some of you may know, I was a member of the KSU Tellers back in Georgia. But I need to find my voice as a storyteller. This may take a while, but for now, I can just do my best with the content I have.


Tonight I went to my weekly class for The Write Club. In this club, what we do is often storytelling, but it is called "solo performance", which as I've been told is actually different than storytelling. Solo performance can incorporate storytelling, but storytelling is much more of a specific craft. In The Write Club, we write stories, mostly personal narratives, or poems, or whatever, and perform them. Some of the works coming out of this class are amazing! This is an awesome class, and the fact that I was able to get in is a gift from above, I believe, because it is by invitation only. I'm learning so much here about crafting stories from my own experience.


When I first got to L.A., I tried several things right off the bat. I took an improv class, a different solo performance class, and did a showcase with some other actors of An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein. Theatre out here is primarily performed in order to gain attention from film industry people, and thus showcases abound. Limits of money and time required that I make choices. I already know a lot about improv, the solo class was too expensive, and the showcase is remounting, but I opted out for the second go round. I am trying to narrow my options.


On the other hand, I'm picking up new ways to spend my time. I've joined a band, and have been working to advance my guitar skills, in addition to singing. Plus, there is my writing, which there never seems to be enough time for. I wonder why?


I'm still waiting to see if I get into that Warner Brothers television writing program, so I'll keep you posted about that, and these other endeavors. Hopefully God will make my path straight, because it gets tough being away from my family and the life I had in Georgia. But like my wise grandpa told me on the phone recently, "You can't have everything." At least not on earth, anyway.

Little Fish Updates

Sorry it's been such a long time since I posted. You can blame part of that on Robin, who demanded that I fly back to Georgia for a visit week before last. Part of it you can blame on me and my weakness for not being able to decide between twenty different projects and trying to work on them all.



I do want to thank Robin for flying me back. We got to see the the new Harry Potter movie at the midnight premier (and once more after that while I was there). It was excellent, and the crowd was really into it. I dressed as Molly Weasley, who if you don't know, is the mother of the seven red-headed children, including Harry's best friend Ron and his future wife Ginny. She's such a fun character to dress as- I like to intimidate people and call them "dear" (only while dressing as Molly, of course). I also had a wonderful trip spending quality time with my parents and grandparents, and seeing some old friends. And I thank the Lord the flights went well! I am not crazy about flying, and this was my first time since before the terrorist attacks in 2001. This week, though, I was back in good ole Southern California and had to work a lot to make up for missing work the week before.



Something else which has kept me occupied since I got back was the deadline looming over me to finish a spec script for the Warner Brothers TV Writer's Workshop. A spec script is a script for an existing television show, and the one I wrote is for The Office. After a lot of last minute revisions this week, I was able to send in with my application what I feel is a solid script. Thank God! It was harder than I thought it would be, writing for an existing show. You have to know the show's history and characters very well. If I get into this program, it will be amazing, because they accept about 10 out of roughly 1000 applications per year. The program is a workshop every week for about 9 months, which is supposed to be a major stepping stone to television writing, so we'll see what happens. Prayer would be appreciated. Thanks!

First Contact

Last week I registered with Central Casting. For those of you who may have never heard of it, Central Casting is the main source for extras, or "background" actors, in the film and television industry. As a non-union performer, I would receive $64.00 for 8 hours of work, and $126.00 for 8 hours of Union work. Right now as a non-union actor, I really cannot afford to spend many days doing this work instead of massage. I did want to register, however, thinking that if I had a day or two off, I could try to get some extra work, and start spending some time on sets. I plan to try to get my first day of background work this week. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Something interesting happened, though, when I was leaving. I had to stand in line to get registered, and it was a long line. There are designated days for union "talent", and then for non-union talent. There must be hundreds or maybe even thousands of people filing through that place each week. So, I went outside, and there were two ladies handing out fliers for acting workshops. Or, I should say, one handing out fliers and the other doing a survey of some kind. I did not think much of this at first, because everybody and their brother has an acting class or workshop out here. It is how people getting started network, and usually there are showcases at the end of the class at which, theoretically, there will be casting directors and agents just waiting to discover you. So, I thought this was just another one of these.

Then, though, I happened to notice as I was looking over the flier that the very small print had L. Ron Hubbard's name in it. Of course, I know what that means- Scientology. Then I saw that the $17.00 fee for this workshop, pretty cheap for such a workshop usually, included a copy of one of Hubbard's books.

So, I asked one of the ladies if this class was associated with any particular group, and SHE DENIED IT!!! I guess they hang out there because of the mass of people who file through there all the time- a numbers game, maybe. And I have the copy of the survey but have not looked at it carefully yet. If it's interesting, I'll try to share some of it with you later. So, there you go. First contact with Central Casting, and with creepy Scientologists. It was quite an eventful week.

BTW, IF YOU ARE READING THIS AND ARE A SCIENTOLOGIST, I HOPE YOU DO NOT TAKE OFFENSE TO BEING CALLED CREEPY, BUT COME ON...

Westward Ho, Part III: Striking Beauty and Dangerous Apples

Remember where we left off? In Utah! Right! Well, after a short detour during which we tried to tour the Hoover Dam and failed, we headed back to Arizona to spend the night and then took off for California. A couple of things stopped us from getting to see the dam. First, we had my little Dodge Neon and my dad's Suburban which was pulling the U-Haul trailer. Well, after 9-11, the powers that be do not allow trailers across the dam. That is certainly understandable, but it required us to adjust our route- the only time we had to do that during the entirety of our trip. So, we were making plans to try to move all of the bags which were packed into my car into the Suburban so that we could all four pile into the little yellow Neon and take the tour of the dam. However, they decided it would be a good idea if we called first, and thank God we did! The elevator was broken down! We could not take the 2 hour tour without the elevator, and we decided the 30 minute tour was not worth moving all the luggage out of my car. Thus, no Hoover Dam. The good news, for me anyway, is that I live just a few hours away, and I could go and take the tour another day. Enjoy some of the pictures of our drive from Kingman, Az to the California border.

Here is my dad and his wife, Debra, getting excited to be ditching the trailer. I hear that thing is not easy to pull. I didn't even attempt it. I stuck with my little Dodge.

Ah, 1o states, counting good ol' Georgia, and finally we were arriving. I had never set foot in California, so it was an unusual feeling to be not only arriving there, but planning to call it my new home. My first stop was a memorable one. I had my apple confiscated at a border check- yes, a border check at a U.S. state line! Take a look.

So, it seems that because my apple was not labelled (GASP!), it posed a danger to the entire fruit population of the state of California and therefore could not be allowed in. I bet some California state employee ate my apple and unknown numbers of nameless bananas and oranges that Friday afternoon while laughing gayly at the ignorance of the Golden State's new inhabitants. Or maybe I'm paranoid. Anyway...speaking of paranoia, the same border patrol made Dad and Debra open up the trailer, I suppose so they could make sure there were no deadly ferns in there. Thank the good Lord they did not make us empty that trailer! It was packed to the gills, I tell you what!

Seriously, though, apparently one of California's main industries is agriculture. Who knew? I would love to venture up into the middle part of the state where there must be so much farming land. I suppose it would cause a great deal of harm to have some kind of disease-ridden fruit brought into the state which could infect its produce.

Before this trip, I had no idea that California was such an agriculturally important state. I thought the main industry for the state was movie-making. Now wouldn't that be something- if they stopped all "artists" at the border and made sure they could deliver on the talent they claimed to have, or at least that the rotten ones would not infect the rest of us with their tripe. What a prospect! Just think- we could have been spared such wastes of celluloid as American Pie: Band Camp and Battlefield Earth (L. Ron Hubbard's scientology-based "sci-fi" attempt, widely considered a disaster.) They talk a lot about wasting resources out here, but I wonder how much precious time, money, and material has gone into ridiculous films that never should have been made in the first place. Well, sorry for that little tangent...let's get back to the trip!

The Mojave Desert...............................................................................................................

And here we have some lovely black lava rocks. I wonder how old they are?

And then, across the desert, after the most isolated part of the entire trip during which we must, at one point, have gone at least 50 miles without seeing anything but the road and the desert, we spotted snow-covered mountains.

Seeing the mountains, but still in the desert...I know there are a lot of these, but I just found these mountains so beautiful after driving through the desert for so long, though the desert certainly held its own beauty. And I just had no idea how beautiful California would be. I suppose I knew on some level that it was, and I knew that it had mountains, but I was truly stunned by the landscape as we drew closer to Los Angeles. Even now, a whole 12 days later, I thrill at the fact that I can see mountains from the street on which I live- through a haze of smog, yes, but still...We saw quite a few trains coming across the West. There was something different about being able to see them coming or going for miles. At one point, in Mew Mexico, I believe, or just after entering Arizona, one rode beside us for many miles, sometimes closer, sometimes further away, but running parallel to us, and running fast. There were few variations in the path they had cut through those rocks to slow that engineer down. I was impressed, then, by this one in California as well.And then we were really getting close.

Here is the view from the gas station we stopped at about an hour outside of Los Angeles. This was one of my first looks at some of the architecture of the area. They make great use of the adobe-style building or house, but instead of the square adobe roofs of New Mexico and Arizona that I saw so much, there were these tiles on the roofs. I'm not sure what they are called, but I suppose they are made of clay. Many of the houses out here, or most of them, are shingled with these tiles. They are sort of difficult to see here, but maybe you can make them out.These tiny specks are actually houses near the gas station. I wish I could remember the name of the town- still about a mile out of LA- starts with a "T", I think.And here we go- entering the outskirts of Los Angeles and Hollywood, though we swung around just a little Northwest of them, I believe, and headed for the San Fernando Valley. Here are some pics I took along the way as my cousin Shirley drove through the Friday afternoon rush hour traffic for me. That was so nice! Thank God we made it in one piece!Behold the creepy mannachins perched to wave at the passers-by on the freeway. Wouldn't that be a driving hazard? Welcome to Hollywood!And here is the apartment building in which I now reside! Impressive, huh? Actually, it is not a bad neighborhood, and the security in the building is great. I have a gated parking space, and there is a gated front walk-in entrance to the building that must be opened with a separate key. I feel safer here than in most of the places I lived in the Atlanta area. As long as there are no earthquakes- no bad ones, anyway. Let's hope.

And then, here's my dad generously buying me new mattresses and getting them loaded onto the top of the Suburban. The whole reason we had to get new ones is because the ones I had in Atlanta would barely fit in there as advertised, and these would not fit at all, even though they had stated that this trailer would indeed hold a queen-sized mattress. Below, we have the blessed ditching of the trailer. I know my Dad, Debra, and Shirley, who took turns driving it, were glad to be rid of it.

The Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica. They took me down here before leaving to help me make sure I could find the location of my job interview that was coming up Monday morning. Santa Monica and Venice are right next to each other, and my interview was at Venice. (I got the job, by the way. I plan to write more on that soon.) Then we made our way down to the Santa Monica Pier. Simply amazing. I had not seen an ocean in probably five years, and I love the ocean!Here is Shirley, with whom I shared most of the 3000-plus-miles trip across country in the little Dodge Neon, which so faithfully pulled us through with no trouble. But of course, I know who really pulled two vehicles, a trailer, four people, and a whole bunch of stuff across country with no problems- the one true God. Thank You, Lord, for a safe and wonderful experience, and the opportunity to pursue my dreams!And finally the pier, where the "Circus by the Sea" has existed for a long time, and street bohemians thrive. So, we have an amazing country (and I only saw part of it)- and that's only one country on this earth. If this is the fallen creation, and I believe it is, let us lift our hearts toward the real home which awaits us and wonder what dreams may come.