Cocaine Tea and Seasonal Nudism

Winter has finally arrived in New York City. It is snowing tonight, the soft, sparkly kind of snow that makes everything sound quieter. And it's damn cold. My fingers and toes hurt just thinking about the weather outside. I have closed all the curtains in my apartment so I don't have to think about it. I just hate winter. It's full of disagreeable things, like heavy coats, dry skin, and stuffy noses. As soon as the temperature drops below 40 degrees or so, I will maintain a stuffy nose until it warms back up. Lots of snot and phlegm. Mountains of used tissues cover every surface of my apartment. Yes, I know that tissues are disposable, but for some reason, I feel compelled to save a tissue after blowing my nose and set it aside for later. There's always a clean bit left, and it's only until I cover every square centimeter of the tissue with boogers that I can be ok with throwing it away. It's gross, for sure, but it's good economics. One box of Kleenex may last me all winter.

Everyone at work has had the flu recently, so I am doing my best to avoid coming down with any form of this menace. I am drinking hot tea like an addict, and I even made my own formula last night with fresh lemon juice and chopped ginger. It was a little too strong, and I think it may have stripped some of the lining off the inside of my esophagus, but no flu yet. Tea is just great. I remember, when I was in the high mountains of Peru, downing cup after cup of mate de coca, a tea made from the leaves of the coca plant (yep, coca as in cocaine), to fight the effects of altitude sickness. That stuff is AMAZING and it wouldn't surprise me if it could cure cancer and/or baldness. It can certainly cure headaches, nausea, and a rotten mood. I think it's illegal here in the US, but on my next trip to the Andes, I am bringing back 14 boxes of that tea in my dirty sock bag. I have smuggled much contraband into this country that way. Nobody ever checks the dirty sock bag.

I also hate the clothes associated with winter. All those bulky layers and sleeves and extra fabric flapping around. I already hate sleeves, no matter what time of year it is. If I could live in just a tank top (pants optional), I would, no doubt. Sleeves always make me feel itchy. I habitually push them up past my elbows, and then they fall down, and then I push them back up, only to have them fall back down two minutes later, and the mad cycle continues. Also, I only own, like, three long-sleeved shirts because I can't be bothered to buy any more when I hate them so much. And don't get me started on sweaters. Or turtlenecks. Lord. I absolutely cannot abide a turtleneck. A friend gave me a cute shirt once that had a turtleneck, and I cut it off. I think comedian Mitch Hedburg, may he rest in peace, said it best when he quipped that wearing a turtleneck is like being slowly strangled by a really weak guy. Ditto for scarves. I would just prefer that nothing be touching my neck or arms, except maybe my hair, which sometimes feels nice. Also, I'm not a big fan of socks. Or shoes. Bottom line, clothes stress me out. I think this makes me a prime candidate for member of a nudist colony. However, I still cringe at the dimply boobs and bottoms that come flying at me from all directions in the women's locker room at the gym, and penises make me giggle like a maniac, so I may have to go blind first. Yep, if I go blind someday, I am definitely moving to a nudist colony.

This post is for David and Pedro, currently my two biggest stalkers. Thanks, boys, for your interest in my life and work. I'll let the creepiness factor slide as long as you keep reading.

I cooked something tonight and it didn't suck.

On Friday, I am going home to Alabama for five days, so until then, I am trying to eat everything in my kitchen. I would prefer to return to a clean slate/fridge. As far as creating a cohesive meal goes, the random assortment of foodstuffs lurking in the corners of my fridge would baffle even the most talented of chefs. And, being a terrible cook and endowed with a large imagination, my kitchen disasters are worse than most. I have pretty much come to the conclusion that if I think it sounds like a delicious idea, I should walk away from the stove immediately. If it sounds like a mediocre, boring, bland idea, then I'm safe. Dinner tonight was an egg sandwich and homemade garlic pepper french fries. I was pretty proud of the fries. I cut them up from an actual potato. They didn't crisp up or anything, so it's good that I like soggy fries. The classic egg sandwich, consisting of bread, fried egg, and mayo, is pretty hard to screw up, so that was edible too. Therefore, I consider my dinner a rousing success. I am celebrating by knocking back a pack of strawberry licorice. That's gotta get gone too.

I have a pimple on the back of my head. It is in my hair, and it's driving me crazy. I keep accidently mashing it with various objects, such as my hairbrush, my purse strap, and my fingers (not entirely accidental, as I keep trying to pop it). It is at a time like this that I really miss my mom. She LOVES popping pimples. She doesn't get grossed out or anything. If my pimple is still raging on Friday, my mommy will get it for me.

Liars are horrible people, and I may soon become one of them. The cost of my gym membership has become slightly unmanageable, and I am seriously considering telling the gym that I'm moving back to Alabama. If you relocate to a place where there isn't a branch of the New York Sports Club within 20-odd miles, you are relieved of your membership payment duties. And Alabama certainly fits that bill. Not that I will actually move. They will just think that I moved. Because I will tell them I did. And that will make me a liar. There's some paperwork involving "proof of new residence," which I'm sure won't be difficult to fabricate. With the money I would save in one month of not paying my ghastly gym bill, I could buy a mini trampoline. Which is definitely something my apartment needs. Plus, there are a million gyms in this city, and someone is always running a free trial membership period, so I could gym-hop for awhile until it's warm enough to run around outside again. The New York School of Capoeira offers a week of free lessons. That's where I will be heading first. To do some awesome dance-fighting. And also maybe to meet hot Brazilian men.

I am stressing about the two corpses currently at the top of my ant farm. They died in the tunnels, and it took the other ants awhile to pull them to the surface, so I've been strategizing for a few days. You see, if several ants die around the same time, the others will move them to a vacant spot at the top of the tank, creating a morbid little pile of dead bodies. My ant farm booklet told me that if I leave the dead ones in there long enough, the other ants, all females, will start piling nuggets of gel around them (Yes, I have a lady ant farm, made of blue gel and designed by scientists for a NASA experiment in space. Of course you are jealous.), covering them up in a mass grave. I don't want a giant ant grave in my lovely ant farm. So, I am obliged to remove the top of the tank and pick out the dead guys with my tweezers. Problem is, when the live ants sense the fresh air rushing through their tunnels, they all start having ant fits and running around like crazy people. The objective, presumably, being ESCAPE! I have to quickly ram the lid back on before any get out. These are harvester ants. They have huge jaws. The kind you could probably use to stitch up a wound like they do in the Amazon. I don't want those guys running loose in my apartment. Therefore, until I catch them all asleep down in the bottom sleep chamber of their tunnels, the dead guys remain. Well, one just sorta twitched. So maybe she ain't completely dead yet. Or maybe she's becoming a zombie ant, and will soon begin to hunt and infect all the other ants in the tank. One can only hope.

Avocado Love

There comes a time in every single person's life when you just get tired of canned spaghetti sauce. Let's face it. Pasta is cheap, quick, and almost impossible to screw up. But after eating it every night for four or five nights in a row, you start thinking about what other types of delicious mushy stuff you can pour over your angel hair capellini besides Ragu. (Just kidding. I can't afford Ragu.) Well, I have discovered the answer. Turns out a ripe avocado is just another easy-open container of pasta sauce. Sounds weird, I know, but you should try it. Add a little salt. And voila! Green spaghetti. If you have a jar of pesto lying around, throw some of that in there too if you really want your socks knocked off. I have a theory that avocado can pretty much make any situation better.

Some drunken dumbass somewhere above me is yelling out their window and throwing things down the fire escape. Sometimes I really want to tell people what I think of them around this apartment building. To the girl who is always sitting on the steps in front of my entrance I want to say, "Wow, your life must really suck. Why don't you go get a job instead of glaring at me everytime I come home because you have to move your stupid ass out from in front of the door?" To the drug dealers who lurk around the front gate I want to say, "Wow, your lives must really suck, standing around outside in the cold all night. And stop calling everybody "my nigga." You're frikkin' latino! You're not even black!" And to the building's super, who is practically useless, I would say, "Just because you speak louder doesn't mean I can understand you any better! And complaining about the hardware store for 20 minutes because you bought the wrong part isn't gonna fix my shower any faster!" I think what all these people need in their lives is more avocado.

I love my neighborhood.

And then I ate his antennae. They were crunchy.

I am doing laundry again. Although this time it is no longer my building. I had some money left on my laundry card and I wanted to use it up, so I snuck back in. Which wasn’t at all difficult, seeing as how I;ve only been gone a week and I transported  my dirty laundry in my suitcase, so it just looks like I’ve been on vacation. And who’s gonna suspect a confident-looking white girl anyways? In this respect, at least, my skin color works in my favor.

Yes, I’m in my new apartment now. I haven’t blogged in many many weeks, mostly because I haven’t had any free time until very recently. I’m no longer in classes. They ended Friday a week ago. Since then, I’ve just been working and trying to set up my new one-bedroom apartment, which is no easy task seeing as how I have no means of transporting furniture, if I were to buy some. This is probably why the only furniture I currently own is an inflatable bed from Target and a couple of cheap end tables from IKEA, which is all would fit in my friend Johnny’s car. I saw an inspiring group of photos online of a complete houseful of furniture some guy made out of Fed-Ex boxes. I believe these boxes are free for the taking, so worse comes to worse, I may be breaking out the box cutters and industrial rolls of tape.

It has been easier to set up my kitchen, seeing as how all the big heavy stuff was already in place when I moved in. Brand new stove, refrigerator, cabinets, and sink in all their shiny glory, just waiting for me to dirty ‘em up. I have cooked a few things this week, though I still have a lot of experimenting to do. I do have one slight problem, though. The stove doesn’t have one of those nifty steam-sucking hoods over it, so every time I cook something, the smoke alarm goes off. It has gotten to the point where I don’t even put the broom back in the closet anymore, so it will be constantly nearby in case I need to whack the devil out of the alarm at any given moment. The thing even goes off when I turn on the heat of the apartment. And I haven’t seen a single wisp of smoke! First thing I’m gonna do when I get me some proper furniture is climb up on it and disconnect that ridiculous alarm. I sleep right next to the fire escape, so I’ll be fine. And my sanity will stay intact. Possibly, I will be even safer without the fire alarm, because if the darn thing keeps going off at all hours for no reason, my neighbors just might kill me.

As many of you know, I have recently attained a waitressing position at a large restaurant establishment on Times Square. I’ll admit, I’m not loving working there. I waited enough tables in my life to know that serving is good money, and at this restaurant in particular, it’s better than most. But for some reason, I just don’t feel good there. I am thankful to have a job, don’t get me wrong. And the other people who work there are really great. But I guess I’ll just have to look at it as a huge incentive for making my success in the movie business.

I am quite steadily heading in that direction as best I can. I got my headshots last week, and this morning, I took my favorite ones to the retouchers to have them unblemishified and perfected, and then I’ll go print up some copies so I can start going to auditions. This is a very exciting thought. I can’t wait to start doing something that I look forward to, not something I dread.

In our last Acting for Film class, Miguel, the teacher, gave us individual consultations and advice for our careers. He told me I should continue taking classes, such as improv, stand-up, or clowning classes, because I have a strong comedic instinct. I've always been more comfortable with comedy anyways. Miguel says I need to lose my fear of being incredibly silly. That's ironic, because I am absolutely one of the silliest people I know, and I have been supressing my silliness because I wanted my teachers and classmates to think I take acting seriously. Because I do. And I've been working on my subtlety as well, because the actors who are subtle always blow me away. Guess I should head in the other direction for awhile. Too bad I left my red clown nose at home...

It has been a tough last week. The vast majority of my friends from class have gone back to their respective homes all over the world, and what few are left won’t be around much longer themselves. I have been a tad bit depressed these past couple of days, feeling weird about my job and not having anyone to hang out with afterward. Plus, class was FUN! So I have made a list of goals for myself to accomplish in the coming year, including: make five good friends in New York City, enroll in another acting class, and most importantly, be financially successful enough in my film career to be able to stop waiting tables. Hell, I’d be a thousand times happier fetching coffee for a director than fetching coffee for some obnoxious tourist couple from Europe who wants their meals with everything “on the side.” This “on the side” business makes me crazy! I want to remind them that it’s all gonna end up in the same place anyway! The garbage! People waste SO MUCH food! It takes all my willpower not to secret away the barely-touched burritos and plates of pasta into a to-go box, and eventually into my mouth. I know that seems gross, the prospect of eating after strangers. But I'm always just two shakes away from homeless, and pickiness is not a survival-friendly trait. And I like to think of myself as a survivor, and a thriver. Yep, come a nuclear holocaust, and it'll just be me and the cockroaches. Hmm...I wonder how THEY taste...

I ain't never stole nuthin, cep internet. And that don't count, do it?

The second to last toe on my left foot is dying. I know it’s not broken because I can wiggle it, but it’s still headed downhill quickly. I do abuse my toes on a regular basis by stuffing them into shoes (oh, to have been born a hobbit!) but I walked them too much last night in too-high heels, and I guess that was the last straw. I wanted to take them dancing. They really like that. I had plans and everything. But after eight hours of roaming around New York City, ricocheting from rude bouncer to rude bouncer, searching fruitlessly for something fun to do, this is what I get. A red, swollen, blistered, festering toe. And a hoarse voice from karaoke and Black and Milds (a weak stab at saving the night). That’s the way it goes sometimes, though. Better not to plan anything at all and just let destiny unfold. That’s what I’m learning. That’s what my twenties are teaching me. I can’t wait to see what my thirties throw at me. Hopefully a furnished apartment and an exhilarating career. Oh, and also a steel drum. Cause I’ve always wanted one of those.

I have been wearing out my library card these past few weeks. Today’s libraries are kinda like free video stores, and I’ve been checking out loads of DVDs to watch in my spare time. I’ve also been reading screenplays. It’s lovely that watching movies is no longer wasting time for me, but is valuable research for my future film career. I’ve been studying the greats: Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, Christopher Guest (ok, so, maybe This Is Spinal Tap is more of a cult classic, but it still counts). Next up we have Denzel, Bogart, and a little Ethan Hawke (yummy) just for kicks. And I achieved a great success this week. I found one tiny zone in the living room of my apartment where I can pick up a fast enough unprotected wireless connection to stream video, as long as I don’t move from the edge of the couch. Oh, my darling Netflix, how I have missed you so! Lord, bless those who don’t bother with password-protecting their connections. Anyone remember the unprotected Big Dick network that only worked on top of the pillow on my bed in the Warrior house? A comedic goldmine if there ever was one. Protection is overrated anyway.


This weekend marks the halfway-point in my 8-week program. We bid farewell to the 4-weekers yesterday. They were Keren (la cubana), Burak (the Turk), and Dean (the ___________- you can fill in the blank yourself). Our class is down to 11 people now. We lost the Brazilian girl, Marilia, to thyroid surgery two weeks ago, so that’s four gone. (She didn’t die or anything. She just went back to Brazil.) Our guy to girl ratio has worsened, leaving three guys to eight girls. I think that’s one reason that me and Clare (the Aussie) decided to do a scene from Fight Club together for Scene Study class. And also because we wanted to fake-wail on each other.  There is a serious dearth of good meaty roles for women.  Google “scenes for two women” and all you’ll get is Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate about You, or Romy and Michelle. Geez Louise (and Thelma).  The scene from Fight Club is for two men, namely Edward Norton and Brad Pitt (double yummy) but we have tweaked it a bit so that two girls can play it. Sometimes you have to grab something you kind of like and then manipulate it into what you want it to be. That’s how romantic relationships work too, right? Yep, I thought so. Main reason I don’t have one right now.


As always happens when you force a mixed group of very different individuals to spend lots of time together in an enclosed space, our class has formed small groups of friends that hang out together outside of class as well. To be fair, we all intermingle well (is that redundant? How do you intramingle?) and there are a few loners, but outside of class, we are pretty segregated. My group is made up of five girls (sound familiar, Jane, Kate, Rach, and Ash?). It’s me, Clare, Keren, Heshi, and Siting. When we have days off from class, some combination of the five of us tends to gravitate together and go off and do fun New Yorky stuff. Add a random guy from class every now and then if you want. Two weeks ago we rode the ferry over to Staten Island, passing the Statue of Liberty, and walked around the Botanical Gardens there. Last Sunday, I met Siting and Heshi in Upper Manhattan to attend a free Medieval festival. It was a fateful day for Siting, because she tried her first turkey leg and also fell in love. With a knight on horseback. Named Bubba. She’s been relentlessly searching for him on Facebook ever since. Thursday of this week, we all five met in Central Park and had a picnic in the grass. We were joined by Jay this time too, though I’m honestly not sure how much fun he had being surrounded by all these screeching girls (some more screeching than others). He brought cheesecake to the picnic though, so he was warmly welcomed into the fold. And last night, as I have mentioned before, we injured ourselves walking all over Manhattan, trying to find some jumping 18+ nightlife. It was supposed to be a big group from class, but people kept dropping out at the last minute (and it’s a good thing they did or they too would have had to endure the suckfest) so it became just the six of us from the picnic. I am looking forward to the next four weeks when hopefully I will get the chance to branch out and get to know other people from class better as well as some of the filmmakers (if I ever get a call back from the open audition). I still don’t know many people in New York, so any connections I can make (to exploit) are very welcome.


I have enough money saved up to last me till December, if I can stay out of frickin H&M. However, I am getting antsy to start generating some income again. I saw a young woman on the street today, about my age, holding a sign that said “Homeless but not hopeless; Broke but not broken” and it chilled me to the bone. Although you would have to cut off a few of my body parts and probably lobotomize me before I would ever succumb to homelessness, seeing her there crouching on the sidewalk in the Lower West Side with her little cup of pennies really gave me a sense of urgency about getting on the ball and starting to make some money. Food would be easy to steal around here, since there's so much of it. But you can't really steal an apartment. Well, actually, I think you can. It's called squatting. We'll just keep that as a last resort. But seriously, I really need my own place. The apartment I live in now is fine for the short term, but living with other people is weird and stressful, at least for me, and I am feeling the need for some solitude. Especially since this apartment just took on another renter in addition to me, and now it’s five people fighting for the one bathroom. Yup, it’s time to move on. I’ll probably wind up in a $1,200 a month closet, but at least I will have my own bathroom. My very own tiny, cramped bathroom. To me, that’s real luxury.

Acting classes are like kindergarten, only much more expensive.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 12 days since I last blogged. These 8 weeks are flying by so quickly, and I have kept very busy with all my schooling, researching, and touristing. Right now I am writing this in the laundry room on the 2^nd floor of my building. I just put in two loads to wash, and, scared shitless of someone stealing the few clothes I own if I leave, I have set up camp down here to wait out my cycles. I am actually writing this on a real notepad with a real pen, and shamefully, five sentences in, my hand already hurts. I would bring my laptop down here and type as I go like usual, but I’m also scared of getting mugged. Not that it’s likely to happen, but you never know about laundry rooms.

I believe I’ve already introduced you to Dean. As I said before, I was paired with him in my Scene Study class and we were given a scene from Good Will Hunting to perform. It went decently well. I just told myself that this was my first big acting challenge: smile and flirt with someone who totally repulsed me in reality, and make it believable. I wonder if that’s what it feels like to be a hooker. Anyway, we ran through the scene several times until we knew the lines by memory. It wasn’t hard. It’s a short scene. But after we laid our scripts to the side, Dean’s pronunciation of certain words got weirder and weirder. One particular word, “arbitrary”, somehow eventually morphed into “obituary.” As in: “Eating caramels is just as obituary as drinking coffee.” I kid you not. Since I am working on curbing my know-it-all-ness, I resolutely bit my tongue and didn’t correct him. Mercifully, someone else in the class noticed and corrected him for me. And then I was finally able to let out all the pent-up laughter that had built up during the last week along with the roars of the rest of the class. The last time we did the scene, the teacher made us yell the whole thing at each other like we were truly in a crowded, noisy bar. It was ridiculous, especially since the actual room we were in was pretty quiet, but afterwards, everyone said the yelling version was much better than before. We have Scene Study class again on Friday, so I’m gonna pack some throat drops just in case he makes us rehearse it that way again.

Speaking of the Scene Study teacher, his class is a constant exercise in restraining my mad bursts of giggles. He reminds us to figure out the character’s innate need, or what drives the character to do what he or she does. Which would be all well and good, except he accompanies this reminder with a hand gesture that is a sort of pounding on the lower part of his stomach with the side of his fist. He walks around the classroom making this gesture, and I’m very sorry, but my sordid mind goes immediately to a very wrong place, and I have to turn away. Go ahead and make the gesture yourself. You’ll see what I mean.

Now, a little about Improv class and Voice/Movement class. These two are similar in that they usually have us bellowing strange sounds, acting absurd, and trying to generate as much silliness as possible. Luckly, silliness is kinda my forte. Seriously, this stuff would not be out of place in an elementary school. Ok, I take that back. Some things happen in class that are definitely not child-appropriate. However, I quite often find myself getting excited when I hear the words "play" and "game," grinning like the cheshire cat while crawling around on the floor like a large land mammal, and wiggling around in my chair when I have to pee. Am I reverting back to an earlier stage of maturity? If this is what acting classes do to you, why didn't I sign up sooner?

In Improv, we play a lot of games like Slow-Motion Tag, the so-called Torture Puppets (where two people are puppets and their movements are controlled by their puppeteers), Therapy (where the “psychiatrist” has to figure out what’s wrong with the “patients”) and other similar games that remind me of a really bad episode of Who’s Line Is It Anyway?  We are beginners, after all. If you throw me a giant invisible cucumber, it may take me a minute to figure out what to do with it.

There’s one game we play a lot, and it’s called, like, “Space Freeze” or something. Everyone gets in a circle, and one person goes to the center and starts acting out some mini-scene with a lot of physical movement. As soon as you get inspired by some motion they made, you yell “FREEZE!” and then take their physical position in the circle and start your own mini-scene, based on the position you froze them in. Sometimes a person’s mini-scene will go on too long, and you can see them getting impatient for someone to freeze them. This happened today, and I froze someone out of pity. As I took her place, stretched out on the floor, I realized I had no idea of what to do. Then, inspiration struck, and I stuck out my leg and started saying things like, “Oh yes, that feels good. A little more to the left. Thank you, I’m going to sleep now.” Too late, I realized what that sounded like, and then someone murmured something like, “Oh, it’s sex.” Um…no. Actually, it was a foot massage. After that, I kept my red-faced self silent for the rest of the game. There are few things worse than badly mimed sex in mixed company. Even if it is supposed to be a foot massage.

In Voice/ Movement class, we usually do some yoga poses to get limbered up, and then the rest of the class is filled with strange voice exercises- Zooooom. Fuh! Pewwwwwww! Bodega Topeka Bodega Topeka- and synchronization games that involve lots of focus and almost no talking. For example, one of these games has us all strolling silently around the room, paying attention to one another, and then we all have to jump up in the air at the exact same time without anyone leading or saying anything. You just have to feel when everyone is going to jump, and then you jump. It sounds a lot more impossible than it really is. It gets less impossible with practice.

In today’s class, we did something really interesting. The teacher told us to all go outside to the street for 20 minutes and observe the way people walk. Then we had to pick someone and learn to imitate their walk, ideally without them noticing what we were doing. Some of us were less stealthy than others. The boy from Turkey, Burak, got yelled at by a guy for following him for three blocks and aping his swagger. Siting, from China, even went so far as to follow her quarry into his office building, though she wisely decided not to get in the elevator with him. My favorite part of the assignment was watching as my classmates walked by, always in a noticeably unusual way. If I looked ahead of them a few feet, it was easy to figure out who they were mimicking. Then we all went back to the classroom and demonstrated our walks for each other. The object of the game was to try and guess what the person was like who the student followed, based solely on the way they walked. Some of them, we nailed. Others were surprising. There were at least two walks we thought belonged to women, but that turned out to belong to men. Pure comedy, baby.

One other class we have is called Monologues. So far, this class has been similar to Improv and Voice/Movement. We’ve done a lot of strange things, like passing a sound around the circle, walking across the room with imagined physical impairments, ranting in gibberish, and even staring at someone in the eyes for five whole minutes without looking away. I try to look at it like this: the more foolish I feel in class, the less foolish I will feel out in the real world. We are going to start working on our first monologue this Friday. I have chosen three that I like out of a book I bought at the Drama Bookshop, an literary oasis of everything theatre and film. My favorite one so far features a girl conversing with her cat, telling him how much she hates him. I can definitely relate to that.

I really want to talk about the awesome friends I have made so far, but that will have to wait for next time. I have to get in bed because class starts early in the morning, and I have to be well-rested so I can slap Bailey good and hard in the face and yell a bad word at him in a lovely scene from When Harry Met Sally that we will be doing in Audition Technique class. Apparently, I am Sally, because I keep winding up with scenes from that movie. Oh well. I'm perfectly happy to follow in Meg Ryan's romantically comedic footsteps. Does this mean I should start working on a remake of Joe vs. the Volcano? You know it’s my favorite movie of all time. I already know all the lines by heart. Or maybe I’ll write Joe: the Sequel in which Joe and Patricia wind up floating to Australia where they meet Crocodile Dundee, and learn to live in peace with nature under his wise tutelage. Because I love Paul Hogan too. You see? I told you so. I positively frolic in silliness.

A Confession

Ok, I am going to fess up. I haven't been completely honest with many of you. Yes, I am in New York, and yes, I am taking classes at the New York Film Academy. However, they aren't filmmaking classes like I told everyone. They are...please try not to laugh...acting classes. I was too embarassed to tell the truth because a 27 year-old leaving a perfectly good job to run off to New York and be an actor is quite laughable. And also, kind of against my personality. Not the running off to places part, obviously. But as a person with very few emotions to begin with, acting should never have even been on the radar. It's possible a reader who doesn't know me all that well might be thinking, 'What is this lack of emotions stuff all about?' It's true. I am mostly dead inside. It has become a long-running joke among those closest to me. In my first two days of class, it has been vocalized more than once that suppressing emotions is a defense mechanism. What I am defending against, I have no idea. But apparently, I have been screwed up from the very beginning. Mom told me that when I was a kid, I used to laugh when other kids got hurt. It mortified her. I'm sure she thought I was a tiny sociopath. I'll bet me cutting my own hair again wasn't the only reason she hid the scissors. And even today, when I am around someone who is openly crying, I feel a horrifying giggle bubbling up inside and I have to turn away so they won't see me grinning. Yes, I am sick. And I am here in New York to get better. And also to make lots of gay friends.

Two days of classes and I have already learned so much. Each day gets three classes. Yesterday my group, section C of the 8-week Acting for Film program, had Audition Technique in the morning, Acting for Film 1 in the afternoon, and Improvisation in the early evening. Today, we had two classes of Acting for Film 1, and then Scene Study. The teachers are mostly very cool, supportive, friendly, and very encouraging. We had one guy today though, the Scene Study teacher, who kept making inappropriate sexual innuendos and gave us all a scene about eating pie to read that definitely wasn’t about eating pie.

I have made a few friends in my classes so far. Section C has all the same classes together and we stay in a cluster the whole day. There are 15 of us, 5 of which are American. The others come from all over: 2 from China, 2 from Brazil, 1 from Australia, 1 from Cuba, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Russia, 1 from Switzerland, and 1 from Turkey. I talk mostly with the Australian girl, Clare, though everyone else is also very nice and interesting. The Chinese girls are- you guessed it- extremely quiet. The Brazilians and Cuban are bubbly. The Europeans are reserved. The Turkish guy didn't show up for class today, so we'll see about him.

The Americans are a varied group. Besides myself, there's a red-headed guy from Texas, Bailey, who's loud and friendly, but is the kind of person who feels the need to fill any silences with banter. The girl from Connecticut is...well...think Bella Swan from the Twilight movie. Actually, her name is Isabelle. She, too, is vampire-obsessed, though please don't compare her to Kristen Stewart, because she "f***ing hates that b***h." In addition, there’s Jay, who claims he's half Jersey/ half PA (which I guess means Pennsylvania) and is all tatted up, with a long black ponytail. And then there's Dean.

Dean is a conundrum. He's full-on Jersey Shore, for one thing. And his last name is Italian, so he is an actual guido. He has this aloof, too-cool-for-school vibe going on. He actually fell asleep in Improv class yesterday. And, bless his heart, he's dumb as a brick. Example: During one game in Improv, we had to give the person next to us the name of an animal that they were going to imitate. I give Dean, who is next to me, the word caribou. He looks at me blankly and says, "What's that?" Ok, so maybe he grew up between four walls in Jersey, sheltered from all influences of wildlife, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. I say, "It's like a big deer," but his face still doesn't change, so I say, "Never mind," and give him rooster instead. Everyone knows what a rooster is, right? So, in the improv scene, Dean has to portray his animal in a bar. A rooster in a bar. Absurdity is key to successful improv, you know. When the improv coach (who totally reminds me of a shorter Idina Menzel) asks him what a rooster's motive might be for going to a bar, he thinks real hard about it and finally proclaims to the whole class that he's at the bar to pick up lady roosters.

---I'll give you a second to think about that---

But in Dean's defense, the kid reads beautifully. Every time someone hands him a scene to read, it comes out like he's said those words a million times over, and won an Oscar for them already. He totally confounds me. He's my partner in the Scene Study class, and we were given a scene from Good Will Hunting, the one where Will and Skylar first meet in the college bar (how 'bout them apples?). It's a good scene, and it's gonna be really hard for me to not do it in a British accent, a la Minnie Driver. But with Dean, it should be ok. As long as he can be bothered to learn his lines.

Acting for Film 1 is my favorite class so far. Today, Bailey and I were picked to be the class guinea pigs (ok, I enthusiastically volunteered) and we spent two and a half hours up in front of the class doing a scene from Pulp Fiction in various ways, as the teacher showed us how to make decisions about our characters, how to move in front of the camera, and how to show the real meaning of the scene with our movements and emotions, rather than through the lines of dialogue. The scene is from the end of the movie, when Mia and Vincent are saying goodbye and Mia finally tells her tomato joke. Being up there and on camera for so long was both exhilarating and exhausting. Bailey and I were made to seduce each other with our eyes, flirt, hold hands, say the lines, and try to keep it from looking silly. I’m certainly no Uma Thurman, and I would have felt more comfortable holding hands with Tinky Winky the Teletubby at first. But as we went through it over and over again, it became easier and looser until finally, I think we kinda got it. I do feel a little bad that nobody else but us two got to act in that class. But I guess the teacher wanted everyone to watch us as we progressed from extremely uncomfortable to slightly less uncomfortable onscreen. I certainly think it was a successful day. Except now, every time Bailey looks at me, he keeps trying to seduce me with his eyes.

I am trying so hard to not be a volunteer hog. Every time a teacher asks for volunteers (and they do it a lot) my legs want to shoot me out of my desk to the front of the room and grab all the practice for myself. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that hardly anyone else ever wants to volunteer. The seconds tick by agonizingly as the teacher looks around the room, asking "Anybody at all?" It's that same feeling I used to get when a new Beanie Baby came out and I was worried my best friend Jami would get it first. I'm just afraid that if I push it too far, the teacher might wind up saying, "Ginny, sit back down. You've had three turns already."

The biggest project I have coming up is a scene for the Acting for Film 1 class, which will be filmed, edited, and then added to our class reel of finished work. This time my partner is Jay, the ponytailed tattoo canvas, and we will be performing a scene from When Harry Met Sally. As soon as the teacher mentioned our scene was gonna come from that movie, I started having a moment of whimpering wooziness. I’m sure you can guess why. What is the one scene that jumps into your head when you think of that movie? Well, thank the gods of fledgling actors, the teacher didn’t give us that scene. Hell, I had trouble making googly eyes at Bailey. There’s no way I’m ready to jump that far in yet. Instead, he gave us a scene about days-of-the-week underpants, which is slightly less impossible. And if you haven’t seen the movie and don’t have a clue about the infamous scene which threw me into a conniption fit, well, first of all, shame on you. Second of all, get thyself to YouTube speedy quick and type in “I’ll have what she’s having.” Just tuck the kiddos in bed first.