LIE TO ME, Part I

So, I booked my first role since the move. Yay!

It's a co-star on a mid-season replacement on FOX called Lie To Me starring Tim Roth. The show is about a group of behavioral doctors, etc., who solve cases by reading "microexpressions" in people's faces which indicate that they're lying. I watched a promo for it, and I actually think it's going to be a really good show.

I'm a little bummed to be back in co-star land, but am happy for the work. And the main thing is that I got in to see a casting director who I met two years ago, and she really liked what I did, took some time to get reacquainted with me, and called me in the next day for a much larger guest star on a different series. Actually, a Mossad agent, which would have been incredibly fun. But she decided I was too young, told me she'd definitely use me in the future, and in the meantime, did I want to play the original role I came in for? Which was Videographer #1 at a Korean wedding. And having hardly even auditioned all fall (it's been deadly quiet), I was happy for the job.

The shoot was most of last week. This post is about the first couple of days, which were wonderful and bizarre. The main action at the beginning of the episode takes place at the wedding of the son of a Korean ambassador—a huge, opulent affair. Most of the other co-starring roles were Korean-American actors (or other asian types who were playing Korean-American). Plus there were about 250 extras (or "atmosphere" as they are called here), by far the most I've ever worked with on a set before. The extras were about 3/4 asian, 1/4 caucasian. There were guests, waiters, other videographers, photographers, secret service people, the wedding party, a group of traditional korean fan dancers.....and of course about 40-50 crew. Madness!

It was fascinating. First of all, I was hanging out with the other co-star types. The Korean guys all pretty much knew each other and what kind of work each had done lately. Many of them had appeared together before, on numerous occasions. I realized that as a subset of all LA actors, the Korean acting community must be pretty tight. There were animated discussions about the script, which dealt with "microexpressions" of behavior but with a Korean twist (i.e., one character had to betray his inner feelings by not bowing deferentially enough....a tip-off to the resentment he's feeling. The actor playing the role was debating how low he should bow so as to show the microexpression, yet not be too obvious). At one point the episode's author writer came over and said he'd read that Koreans never showed disgust as an expression; the actors all cried in unison, "unless he's drunk!"...indicating to me that this must be a commonly accepted fact in Korean culture. Again, fascinating stuff.

Looking around the wedding reception, I saw many older actors (which is right for a wedding, yes?), including an entire table of extras of what I guessed to be Indian descent. They were wearing saris and seemed completely out of place compared to the rest of the room! I found myself wondering what in the world they were doing there, and decided that the ambassador must have colleagues at the embassy who he invites to his son's wedding or whatever.

All in all, it was a great couple of days shooting the wedding scene. The kind of stuff I love about shoots: meeting a bunch of talented and very diverse people, figuring out how to make the scene consistent but fresh for each take, having fun imagining what the actual wedding would have been like.

Alas, Part II of the shoot was not as great. But more on that in my next post....

Crickets Are the Roaches of Silver Lake

Ya’ got crickets anyway. Tons a’ crickets out there.

               —Lee, True West (Shepard)

I swear to God there are more crickets here than I've ever seen or heard anywhere else in the country. That includes North Carolina, where there are a lot of crickets.

We see them hopping about the lawn when we come home. We open the door and inevitably one hops into the house. About twice a month, a cricket somehow finds its way into our bathtub and gets trapped there, hapless and confused as a housefly caught between a windowpane and its screen.

And as I type this, I hear in the background? . . . . . chirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirp......

What's the effin' deal with all the crickets? I never heard about this part of LA. Wasn't the cricket supposed to be in Times Square?

Costco, Ikea, Death Warmed Over

Today, Jody and I did our bit to personally stimulate the economy.

To explain: We moved out here with very little in the way of furniture. This is partially because we hated our old furniture and partially because we had to move as cheaply as possible (due to Jody's modest relo package). In essence, we sold most of our stuff in NYC and came here with little more than kitchen supplies, a dining-room table, a hammock, and our clothes.

We bought some living room furniture weeks ago, but are waiting for it to arrive. We have also scavenged a ton of stuff off of craigslist, which seems to have much higher quality stuff in LA than in NYC (and of course we're not in a walkup, so it's easier to grab stuff on a whim). I scored 6 gorgeous dining room chairs for $50 (!), a liquor hutch/linen cabinet for FREE, a dented but useable black lateral file cabinet for FREE....and so on. So we have a few things, but we're far from settled.

One of the ways we've been getting by in the interim is to rent stuff. In fact, we have rented a sofa for the past several weeks, and a TV since June.

It doesn't cost a whole lot to rent a little TV, but it adds up after a while. We just wanted to wait for the holiday sales before we made a major purchase which we knew we'd live with for the next ten years.

Today we bit the bullet and finally picked one out, a beaut from Costco for a ridiculously low price compared to what we'd have paid even a month ago. And a vacuum cleaner, because the house is currently a cat hair dust bunny farm.

We'd never set foot in a Costco before. I found it really a bit insane. But I sure am glad to discover what everyone's been talking about for years.

And we didn't stop there. There are also no closets in this house, so no clothing storage, so a big mess. Presto! Off we went to Ikea in Burbank and bought Pax wardrobe frames, shelves, doors, etc., in an effort to create some kind of elegant clothing solution. I guess I miss building Ikea kitchens, so now I have to build Ikea closet-y things.

Satisfied we'd done our bit to put the country on the right track, we headed home (took two trips in our l'il Prius to haul it all) with Jody feeling more than a little queasy and light-headed. By the time we got here, she also had a headache and fever. And is now conked out for hopefully the next several hours while she fights this thing off.

Sigh. A very productive day from the standpoint of getting a little more settled here, but not without its toll.

Rainy Days and Mondays....

Thursday was overcast for most of the day. And it truly felt WEIRD.

I honestly think I experienced a few hours of SAD (seasonal affective disorder). I felt mopey and lethargic, I got kinda pissy over small things, I had no energy whatsoever.

Late in the afternoon, the sun broke through and within minutes, I felt like my whole day had changed.

Have I gotten that soft already?

I'm Baaaaaack

Okay, it took a looooong time to settle. And to be honest, I'm not really settled yet; more like "less chaotic".

But December has finally brought some cooler weather, so I don't feel as guilty for being inside. My days have become a little more manageable as boxes have been unpacked and the blizzard of bills and tasks involved with the move out here have slowed to a trickle. And I figured if I can waste half an hour on facebook every day, the least I can do is get back to writing here at bLAg.

So hey there again.

It's late, so I'll save the catching up stuff for the next few days. But I'll leave you with one present.

Whenever possible, I'm trying to snap shots of anything unique to LA (thanks, iPhone!). So here's the first pic in this series....

It was taken at The 101 Coffee Shop, a cool retro diner next to (you guessed it) the 101 highway. Great milkshakes and fries, amazing lattes.

And I guess the point of showing this image is this: living in NYC or LA, you are bound to run into celebrities pretty frequently. Most locals will ignore a star as they are walking by as a point of pride:not to be a jackass, but to give the person his or her privacy and to preserve a kind of, "Oh yeah, I hang with the kool kidz all the time" vibe.

But I guess some people still get starstruck: