Relaxing - Momentarily

Wow...that was some party on the 4th of July. We went to an apartment on West 60th Street that had this huge balcony with a three sided view of New York...from the 49th floor. It was deeply amazing. And we were right on top of the fireworks barges! What a view! And Saint Tiger Lily's wonderful food, and tons of nice cold beer...a picture perfect 4th!

I had intended to use yesterday as a day of rest (you know, sleeping late, going to bed early and all like that), but I suddenly realized that I had completely forgotten to get my Rescue Me fix last week, so I had to stay up until midnight for that. And I woke up early Sunday morning because my hungover body was screaming for greasy food and ice cold Diet Coke. So I woke up this morning and read the papers and then suddenly got sleepy. I thought well, it's only ten thirty in the morning, I can catch another hour's sleep and then bounce off and do things...except that I slept until two this afternoon. Evidently I was still tired.

The week ahead is going to be one constant run. Tomorrow I want to go uptown and poke my nose into Fairway and Zabar's...not for any particular reason, just because I realized last week or whenever it was that I was in that general vicinity (catching a location bus to work) that I haven't been up on the West Side for a while, and I'm not doing anything else in particular. And I love checking out grocery stores...although I don't actually think either Fairway or Zabar's qualifies as a grocery store...grocery temple, maybe.

Wednesday night I'm going to another SAG-produced meet the agent thing, this one on the subject of how to get an agent. During the day tomorrow or Wednesday I've got to redo my resume (it just looks a little scruffy to me for some reason) and work on my monologue for an audition at Equity on Thursday, and on Thursday night I'm going to an Audition for the Agents SAG thing. Then July 17th I've got two auditions at Equity.

One of the July 17th auditions has me irritated before I even get to it. I don't know if I've mentioned it here, but according to Equity rules, you have to hold an audition for every show in New York. Unfortunately, nine out of ten of these shows are cast by agents before they ever hold this "open" audition. So you go to the audition mainly to get your picture and resume in somebody's file. I've heard of a couple of people getting cast from EPAs (that's their name - Equity Principal Auditions), but it's one of those legendary things...you personally never know anyone who's gotten cast that way, it's always a friend of a friend of a friend.

Anyway. this 7/17 audition has its time and date and list of available roles on the Equity online callboard, and after every character name, before the character description, it says "Looking for star names for this role." Um, way to trumpet the fact that you're just going through the motions here, guys. I'm not at all sure how many stars they're going to get at a $665 per week minimum, but still - that should make all of us stay away in droves. I mean, why bother?

However, a bunch of us WILL bother, for the aforementioned resume in the file reason...the thing's being done by the New Georges Company, which I would love to get into...along with most of the other actors in New York. And one never knows!

And today I got to France for Sarah's birthday! (Yes, it WAS a quick trip, wasn't it?) I went to the door to pick up the mail, and there was a check from the IRS for $526.33. Seems I screwed up my taxes in MY favor for once! And that will pay for almost my entire air fare! Now all I have to do is hope to hell they don't suddenly decide to raise the fares a thousand bucks, just for the hell of it, which airlines love to do.

Love, Wendy