Happy New Year 2006

It's a new year, so I thought I'd revisit this site after a long and unintentioned hiatus. As I think I've mentioned before, Internet usage is monitored at my current office, so there's no way I'm going to be writing this thing during the day. And that's sort of the problem. Because I usually get inspired to write these things during the day, not at home after work.

Actually, there hasn't been a whole lot to report anyway. I haven't had a major audition in a couple of months. My agency moved to a new office, and let go two of my favorite booking agents. I believe they kept my commercial agent, whom I don't care for at all.

The last audition I went to was at UCLA, which means it was for a student film. This one was for a samurai/assassin, who also has a protege, muchlike the real samurais had. But I think this character's protege was actually his son.

I didn't have much time to study my lines, so I ended up recording the other character's lines on a tape recorder, then doing my lines with it on the way to the audition. Yes, I guess I winged it. Bad on me.

Since I was the only one there at the time, I asked for a few extra minutes to prepare. Yes, I was stalling.

When I finally went in to do my scene, the director explained that I would do the scene in English, but later would have to do it in Japanese. My Japanese pronunciation is pretty decent, so I wasn't worried about it.

As typical, I did the scene the way I had prepared. The second time, he gives me an adjustment. And if there's a third time, he gives me another adjustment for perhaps a different way.

I did the scene three times, and the first one wasn't too shabby. I didn't even flub a line. For the next, he said I should try to seduce the girl who was reading the lines with me, as her character was also a female. So, did my best Barry White samurai I could muster.

That didn't seem to fly with him, as this samurai character is supposed to be a bit, shall we say, flamboyant. Well, the director's words were: "sort of feminine." So, I immediately thought of Koji Sasaki of the famous Miyamoto Musashi-Sasaki Koji duel. Sasaki was described as flamboyant, often wearing a bright red kimono with a bird on it. (Yes, men's Japanese garbs are also called kimono, although I'm sure there are other terms for it.) As for "feminine," I don't know if that was one of his qualities. In a movie version starring Toshiro Mifune, the Sasaki character was far from feminine.

So, giving in, I decided upon a metrosexual samurai who was also a deadly assassin. They seemed impressed, and I went on my flamboyant way.

Outside, I ran into a core member of the Cold Tofu troupe, as you may remember that I am a current member of its lab class. He was a bit embarrassed to see me, as I was to see him. But his credits are bigger than mine, so I supposed his embarrassment was also bigger than mine. We traded small talk and then I went to the bathroom.

On the way out of the building, I ran into another person I hadn't expected to see. His name is Rob Narita and he once did a show I was a featured extra for: Northern Exposure. Anyway, I hadn't seen him in a long, long time. And so when I said, "Man, I didn't expect to see you here," I really meant what I said.

His response: "Oh yeah, well, it's been a while since I've been in the business and, well, I'm just trying to update my reel." Oh, forgot to mention he lived in Japan for the last 10 years. His Japanese probably sounds a little better than mine.

Last night, I had tickets to this big live/electronica music event called Giant. You may have heard of it. They usually attract some 15,000 people. Yesterday was no different in that there were 15,000 people looking forward to having a great night dancing/raving/boogeying or whatever under the downtown L.A. sky.

That was until they decided to cancel the event at around 4 p.m. Most people found out when they showed up for the event that it was canceled. I heard rumors it was canceled at around 5:30 p.m. Unfortunately, I had also bought tickets for about 9 other people. So, we were all shittin' in our raingear, wondering what the hell to do with the rest of our evening. We were also already at a nice restaurant 5 blocks away from the event.

I really don't have a nice ending to this, although I'd like to find something positive to say to start this year out right. But for now, all I can say is, I'm damn glad 2005 is over.