TV Shows and SAG

I know it's been awhile since I posted a blog, so I decided to write one today to just say what has been going on in my life.

The majority of my time recently has been spent trying to find background acting jobs. I've decided to quit my job at Abercrombie and Fitch and make background acting my full time job. In order to have time to do background work, I will also not be going to college as I originally intended, which is okay because my field doesn't require any college degree. I have also decided that I would like to move closer to everything and be in the center of things, so I will be moving to the Burbank area hopefully in the next few months.

Background acting is not only fun but it is also a great way for me to start my career in acting. So far I have worked on Trophy Wife, The Goldbergs, The Mentalist, Shameless, The Middle, and the feature film Ouija. My goal is to become eligible to join SAG, so hopefully that happens in 2014. And in addition to tv shows and movies, I plan on doing background work in commercials as well, which pay a lot better :).

Well that's what I've been doing with my life. Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season! :)

ALMA awards, Central Casting and hiking adventures!!!

So recently Claire and I have been a lot busier. We actually had stuff to do for once. Last Friday night Claire and I attended the Alma Awards here in Pasadena, which by the way is an award show specifically for Latinos in the film, television, and music industries. Once we got to the check-in area we were forced to stand in line for a good half hour to 45 minutes to wait for whatever reason. The red carpet stuff was going on on the other side of the building. Well we finally got into the civic center to the stage and because we were seat fillers, we had to sit 3 seats away from everyone else to be spread out. The stage looked really blue and fancy....but smaller than I expected. We all sat there, just us seat fillers, for like an hour before the whole auditorium was actually filled up. A seat fillers job is to fill in any open seats, but I had to move seats for a kid and a woman. I had no idea who this kid was but it turns out, he was actually a cast member on Modern Family and he plays the part of Manny Delgado. Also at the Alma Awards I saw Jessica Alba present an award, Rosario Dawson (who plays the female lead in the movie Seven Pounds), and Avicii performed their song "Wake Me Up" so that was really cool. After the show ended we walked over to some interview going on about the troubles that Latinos go through and I guess we were on msnbc, so who knew that would happen.

On Sunday evening Claire and I went hiking in Runyon Canyon. After getting off the Metro we walked about 6 blocks to the entrance of Runyon Canyon. By the time we got there it was dark and the canyon just happened to have no lights so I had to use my iPhone's flashlight to stay on path. We walked all the way up (or as far as we wanted to go because we were already out of breath, phew!) and took picture after picture of the LA skyline. The lights were so bright and it felt a little freaky because I felt as if I was going to fall off. However the best and worst part of the night was the fact that we got locked inside the canyon so we were forced to climb over the fence. Besides all the stares we got of people parallel parking by the gate, we made it out alive...and got "free" bottled water.

Yesterday we drove to Burbank and registered for Central Casting (finally!!!!). We had to get there at 1 PM and waited in line for one and a half hours because they only accept a certain amount of people each day to register. PS...Central Casting is an agency that books background actors, aka extras, on TV shows and movies. We finally got out of there a little after 5:30 and then because we were starving, we ate at a buffet in Burbank to celebrate our accomplishment of officially becoming a member of Central Casting. We are following in the footsteps of Brad Pitt, Kelly Clarkson, and John Wayne, who were also members of Central Casting.

Well thats what we have been up to lately! This past week has been pretty busy for us...especially since we have been addicted to Breaking Bad on Netflix!

Goodbye until next time!

Doing Some Exploring

So today Claire and I drove to Burbank to sign up for Central Casting, a television and film extras agency. After filling out the 10 different pages necessary to sign up, we drove to Burbank and spent about 15 minutes just trying to find a place to park that wasn't in the red zone or a no-parking zone. When we finally found a parking space, we walked to Central Casting and were forced to stand in a line of about 80-90 people outside on the sidewalk waiting to get registered, just like us. This was truly the first time that I've ever seen "wannabes" in LA so that was a nice little surprise.

After waiting in line for a good half hour, they finally allow people to come inside and register. The line slowly begins to move towards the door when all of a sudden a woman says, "I'm sorry, but we have reached our capacity of 54 people for today. Please come back Wednesday to register." So I guess getting there a half an hour early wasn't good enough...

Because we were in Burbank and we didn't feel like going home just yet, Claire and I decided to drive to the mountains and overlook the city, which is something we haven't done yet since we have been here. We drove to Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills and stopped at the Universal City Overlook. Looking out, I could see Universal Studios and   NBC Universal. Just while driving through Burbank we saw Walt Disney Studios, NBC Studios, ABC Studios, and Warner Bros Studios.

After looking upon downtown Burbank, we drove to the Hollywood Bowl Overlook and saw a close up of the Hollywood Sign, the Hollywood Bowl, and downtown Los Angeles and its surrounding cities. We even saw a glimpse of the ocean in the distance. It was a beautiful sight to see.

Today was definitely a busier day than usual. I officially begin my job at Abercrombie and Fitch on Thursday and I'm glad I'll have more income finally. Claire and I have a second interview tomorrow evening that is pretty flexible, so hopefully I'll have two jobs to keep me busy.

Well I think that is it for today. Thanks for reading!
Downtown LA pictures  

Burbank picture 

Living the LA Life

Well, I am going to begin blogging again. I was unable to blog for the past however many weeks because my apartment ended up not having wifi. So much has happened since I've been here, and I have no idea where to begin, so I guess I'll just work in chronological order.

As soon as we arrived in the LA area, San Bernardino to be exact, it started to get cloudy and it even rained for a little bit. And to top it all off, we got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic going about a mile every half hour. But once we passed the car accident that was holding everybody up, we were right on our way. I've never driven in LA before, however I quickly had to learn how to drive here. So after about another hour, we exited off the freeway and parked at our apartment. The first thing I noticed was that our apartment was on a very non-busy street and surrounded by trees.

After a few days of being moved in, we decided to try out the Metro and see where it can take us. We walked down to the Del Mar station, bought our TAP card after several tries, and finally boarded the train. Once we were on the train we had no idea where to get off at. We wanted to go to Hollywood and I knew that Union Station in Downtown Los Angeles would probably be our best shot at getting there. So we got off at Union Station and got on the Metro red line to North Hollywood. We got off at Hollywood/Vine and as soon as we walked out of the Metro we saw the big, bright buildings of Hollywood Boulevard. We walked the Walk of Fame sidewalks until night. We visited the Hollywood sign and the Chinese theatre.

About two nights later we decided to visit West Hollywood. The tricky part about this was that the Metro rail system doesn't go to West Hollywood, not yet anyway. So we were forced to take the Gold line to Union Station and then take a bus to West Hollywood. We just so happened to go on a night that the Dodgers were playing a game, so the bus got stuck in traffic for a good half hour. But after we visited West Hollywood and we were ready to go home, we got on the bus and tried to remember where we were supposed to get off to get back to Union Station. We guessed which stop to get off and ended up somehow walking the wrong way. And just so you know, we were walking around at midnight in downtown LA, with scary homeless people all around us. After walking around trying to find Union Station for about a half hour, we ended up calling a cab because at this point we just gave up. At about 1 or 2 AM, we finally made it back home to Pasadena.

More recently, however, we have been focused on applying for jobs. I applied at Abercrombie and Fitch on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena and got hired a few days ago. I'm a little excited about getting a job, making money, making friends, and actually doing something with my life, but I am also a little sad about not being able to do nothing all day.

Some more interesting facts about what has happened recently is that while in Target shopping for groceries, we were confronted by some man who offered us free tickets to a pre-screening of Reese Witherspoon's new movie The Good Lie. So last Wednesday we went to this pre-screening and at the end we were lucky enough to talk with people about how we felt about the movie. The whole point of pre-screenings is to get audience reactions so the makers of the movie can make it better. This was definitely a nice experience and we already have tickets for another pre-screening movie in the future.

The last bit of big news recently is that Claire and I applied for a site called Seatfillers to be seat fillers on an award show. Basically, a seat fillers job is to take a celebrities seat whenever they leave to use the bathroom or whatever. They are there to simply make the audience look full all the time. So we applied for this about 2 weeks ago and we both got an email today telling us that we got accepted for this show next Friday night. So we will be attending the Alma Awards next Friday night as seat fillers! I am even more excited about this because if I do good, then they will ask me to do other award shows, including the Grammys and the Oscars.

So thats whats been up. LA is definitely beginning to get a little more exciting and I am anxious to see what else it has in store for me.

Fear

4 days. That's how long I have left until I leave for LA. I'll be there in 6 days. Things are beginning to dwindle down here in Iowa. My last day working at Pizza Hut was on Sunday and my last day at Adventureland is tomorrow. Adventureland is a little bit more personal to me, only because i've worked there for 3 summers and I know I won't be coming back next summer. I've begun to put all of my Pizza Hut tip money in the bank (finally). After 8 months of storing it in my room I was beginning to run out of places to put it. I feel like the bank people hate me now because I give them a huge stack of money for them to count. But whatever.

Tomorrow I will begin buying items for my apartment. I guess it's better to get them here than to rush to get them out there. I still have all of my packing to do, but it shouldn't take that long. Unlike my roommate, I have very little to bring. My biggest items are my TV and my printer.

Thursday will be my last day of watching Will & Grace for awhile. I'll finish watching the recordings and then delete it. I know it sounds a little pathetic, but if Will & Grace were on Netflix than this problem would be solved. ARE YOU LISTENING NETFIX?!?! 

It's all becoming real...finally. I'm feeling all sorts of emotions about this. Some are good, some are bad. I've heard from several different people that I need to do this while I'm young, because if I don't do it now than I will never do it. I've also read that I should never let fear get in my way of doing something. That I should face my fears. I'm not exactly sure if this is a fear of mine on account of I've always wanted to do this, but it still seems somewhat useful.

I've been looking at jobs in Pasadena on Craigslist. I found this one job that is very flexible, pays a good amount, and is specifically for college aged students. But I'm not sure if I want it. My dream job would be to work on a studio, but since that requires experience, I think working at a comedy club or a theatre would be a cool job too. Hopefully I can get one of these jobs and network my way up the rankings and meet people. I sure hope luck is on my side.

Will & Grace and Big City Dreams

Today was a pretty relaxed day, which after the week I had, today was very much needed. I started the day with watching one of my all-time favorite TV shows...Will & Grace. I'm not sure if you realize how obsessed I am with this show. I have seen nearly every episode at least 3 times each. Will and Grace always puts me in a better mood and it's the only TV show that has actually made me cry from laughing so hard. It's rare for me to even laugh out loud while watching a TV show, but Will and Grace seems to take the tears out of me with no effort.

After Will and Grace and after my awful doctor's office experience, I took a nice hour and a half walk with an old elementary school friend of mine. We take these walks every so often to just catch up on each other's lives and talk to each other about the future. It's nice to be able to talk to someone. I'm the type of person who keeps his thoughts and feelings inside, unless asked by someone to share them. And once asked, I won't stop until my whole life story is brought upon you. I think this world that we live in needs a little of both. Yeah, talking to someone about your problems is a good thing, but I also believe that people should just stop talking for once and listen. Listen to themselves, listen to the world around them, listen to each other. If the world just listened more then I truly believe the world would be a better place. We are always doing something. Always working or always hanging out with friends. We all talk about being so stressed out and wanting time to relax, but once we actually have time to do it we don't do it! Maybe the next time you have a free moment you should just lay down in a dark place and think. Just close your eyes and clear your mind. Forget about the world, forget about yourself. Let your mind become space.

I have always had a love for big cities. I've been dreaming of living in Los Angeles and New York City since I was at least 10. Now that one of those dreams is coming true, I wonder when the other one will become reality. I spent some time tonight searching for the perfect picture of Manhattan at night to put as the background on my computer. I do this every once in a while to keep things interesting. After viewing this picture for some time, I realized that while I love the weather in LA, I feel like my true love is in New York City. Maybe it's just from watching too much Will and Grace. I love the big city lights and the flashing street corners. I've only been to Manhattan once in my life for 2 hours. It was 2 hours I will never forget. I know I will live in Manhattan one day, and I can't wait for that day to come.

Giving It A Chance

Well, I guess I'll try once again to start blogging. My first blog only had 2 posts, and then I became bored with myself and decided to give up. Let's hope this one stays longer.

You are probably wondering who I am....and I wish I could tell you. I don't have the time or patience to tell you who I am simply because I don't know who I am. Maybe you will tell me who I am by reading this blog.

Anyway, so my life is picking up a little bit in excitement....FINALLY! In 9 short days, I will be leaving the life that I have grown accustomed to for the past 18 years and will be moving to Los Angeles to pursue my dreams in the entertainment business. Wow. Nine days. I remember exactly a year ago I was making the biggest decision of my life, to go to college in Chicago or move straight out to LA with a friend.

I'm not sure if I am one to make decisions on impulse. But I do know one thing...if you want something, you have to go and get it and you have to do it NOW! Life isn't going to wait for you. Before you know it it'll zoom right past you before you even know what hit you. That's probably the biggest reason why I decided to risk it all and move to California. Ever since I was little I knew that I was an entertainer. Whenever there was a song in a movie that I really liked, I would watch it over and over again and sing along to it. When I received a karaoke machine for a Christmas present once, I always pretended that I was giving a concert and would sing for hours alone in my room. Whenever I had a bad day, I would watch a movie to cheer me up. (Yes Man, Date Night, and Easy A were the usuals).

Hopefully, in some way, shape, or form, I will achieve my dream of riches and stardom. Not really as much stardom though...more like a Hannah Montana kind of stardom where I can be famous whenever I feel like it. But really more than anything else, my ultimate goal is to inspire people. I want  to make or star in movies where my audience will be clapping and crying tears of joy when it is finished. I want them to go out into the world and fix all of its problems, and I want them to mention my movie for the reason why. Sometimes I will hear a song on the radio that I just get so inspired by and I get all of these really cool plot stories and images in my head just from hearing this song, and then I remind myself that THAT is why I want to go into this industry. It may be difficult, and who knows maybe I won't ever achieve it, but I will try my hardest. I will give it a chance.