Electric Problem

I just got an electric bill for a little under $300 a few days ago.

Up to this point, I'd been paying about $60 a month. According to my bills, I'd used around 180 kilowatt-hours a month. This time, my bill says I've used 1,170 kWh in the last 34 days.

Let me give you a picture of my electricity use. I use an electric oven, refrigerator, and hot water heater. I have about five ceiling lights, the two I use most often are CFL bulbs. I have a laptop, printer, speaker, external hard drive and cell phone charger all plugged into a power strip, which I switch off when I'm not using any of the devices. I have two halogen reading lamps I use sparingly.

There was only one thing I thought could change my bill this much: electric heaters.

True, I had used electric heaters once or twice, about half an hour every couple of days. At first I assumed that must be the culprit. They're big power drainers.

But after running around to make sure they were all unplugged, I stopped to think for a second. According to these bills, they would be responsible for roughly 1,000 kilowatt hours. Now lets do some math and physics.

One kilowatt hour is equal to 1000 watts times one hour. For example, a 100 watt bulb switched on for ten hours.

My heaters are rated at 1,500 watts each. That means it takes one 40 minutes to burn through one kilowatt hour. To make the math easier, lets say I had them on for 40 minutes at a time instead of 20 or 30. In fact, lets say I had them on for that long every day for the last thirty days. That would put an additional 30 kWh on my bill.

My usage didn't increase by 30 kWh. It increased by 1,000 kWh.

I talked to my friends. One told me that the highest bill they ever had was in the middle of the summer when they had two air conditioners running roughly twenty hours a day every day. They used something around 350 kWh. Another set of friends has electric heaters on most hours of the day, plus two computers and countless electronic devices always on. Their last bill was for 300 kWh.

So I thought the reading must have been a mistake. Maybe I'd used 170 instead of 1,170. I called my apartment super and asked him to take a look. He just did.

Not only was the meter reading correct on my bill, but in the five days since it was taken, my apartment has apparently burned through almost 50 more kWh. I wasn't even home most of that time.

Something is seriously wrong here.

When he took the reading, we had switched off all the circuit breakers in my apartment. The meter wasn't moving. I'm leaving for Seattle tomorrow, and on my way out, I'm going to switch them all off again. He's going to take another reading tomorrow, then yet another when I get back on New Years Eve.

Either someone is stealing my electricity, or starting mid November there is now something very, very wrong with my wiring.

The Santa Claus Army

I've been a in a few places where crowds of people have drunkenly started to sing their national anthem for no apparent reason. This weekend was the first time I'd seen it happen in my own country.

There was something strangely appropriate about it. It was inside of a packed bar in Greenwich Village, New York City. About 90% of the people inside were dressed as Santa Claus. Most of them were highly inebriated. The bar was about as big as the pizza shop pictured to the left, only with about 90+ more people inside. A random dozen decided this was the perfect moment to start singing The Star Spangled Banner. Most of the rest joined in.

It was a bunch of young Americans getting terrifically drunk off of cheap light beer in America's most trendy neighborhoods in its biggest city dressed as the non-religious image of the biggest holiday in American culture, and coincidentally the biggest corporate spending and consuming season. All in the spirit of goodwill towards all. With a slight hint of irony, because, after all, this is New York, and Williamsburg (aka Hipstertown, USA) is only four stops away on the L train. Does it get more American than that?

Well, yes, probably, but only because "American" is such a fluid term these days.

The cause of all this? Santacon 2010. As organizers describe it, "non-denominational, non-commercial, non-political and non-sensical Santa Claus convention that occurs once a year for absolutely no reason."

If you were anywhere in the West Village after about 2:30pm yesterday, you could not have tossed a candy cane without hitting someone in a Santa outfit. Sometimes they had beards. Sometimes they had dresses. I'm pretty sure I saw at least one with both. I even saw two Jewish Santas, one in a blue Santa outfit with a star of David pendant at least two feet across, the other in a completely normal Santa costume, except for instead of the normal hat, he was wearing a huge, red, hasidic-style shtreimel. Most Santas around town were drinking, and occasionally making out with Mrs. Claus, elves, reindeer, and other Santas. Also smoking. There's something really funny about watching a dude in a Santa outfit light up a cigarette.

While I accept that this sort of event happens in many other places aside from New York City, I don't know of any place else where, the very next day, on my way to work I would end up running into two city blocks shut down for a Shiite celebration of Ashura. The Santas were hilarious, but the Shiia gave me free pizza. Shoukran and Salaam Alekum, folks.

Good Morning

You know what's really comfortable? Sleeping under a white goose feather down comforter. A nice big one.

My brother sent me one as an early Christmas present. He read what I said here about my apartment building not having a central heating unit, and decided I could use something like that. I brought it home from the post office yesterday. A certain generous, highly intelligent, and attractive writer had given me her old futon the day before. I put away the leaky air mattress and the frame I saved from the trash heap, and set up my new bed.

I may be barely making my rent with my meager hours in my multiple day jobs, but that does mean I have a great deal of time on my hands. I'm pretty insistent on getting eight hours of sleep every night. I'm not behind. I thought I'd just get that again when I went to bed a little before midnight.

I woke up again well after 11am. That was a good night's sleep.

I rolled around and stretched, feeling like a happy, warm cat. Then I reached for my phone. I'd just been redesigning my sister's website and had found out very late last night that through a miscommunication, we'd cut off her new email. I wanted to see how urgent it was. I'd told her to call if it was, but with that comforter, I thought there was probably a good chance she'd called and I had slept right through it.

No missed calls. I flipped open my email. Tons of new messages. Naturally. Three got my attention right away, they were all from Actor's Access, my main platform for getting auditions. I submit a headshot and resume, and if the casting director likes me, they send me a message via something called "Cmail." The three messages' subject lines each read as follows:

3:03am- Cmail Notification
6:03am- Cmail Reminder
9:03am- Cmail- Final Reminder

I still can't believe how often showbiz expects you to check and respond to all messages. I followed the link from Email to Cmail and found an audition invitation. SAG short film agreement pending. They want me to read for the lead. Wow, fantastic. The catch? This lead character is a high school senior.

I vividly remember watching Back to the Future for the first time, and assuming the Michael J. Fox was playing the dad. When I realized he was supposed to be a high school kid, I was stunned, and almost offended. He looked thirty.

When I was sixteen, some friends of friends once mistook me for "somebody's dad or something." Now, I'm twenty-four. Dark hair and sensitive pale skin have given me a semi-permanent five-o-clock shadow. Leaving even my collar shirt button open often prompts other guys to joke pretend I'm challenging them to a chest hair competition. They usually lose. When I told the calculus student I tutor (an actual high school senior) today that these people want me to read for the part of a  seventeen year old, she nearly fell on the floor laughing.

So, potentially, I might be following in some very famous footsteps. They just happen to be footsteps I once treated with disbelief and mild derision. Well, if they think I can act like a convincing high school senior next week, I'll be a high school senior again for them. Either way, I'll just have fun with this reading.

That's next week. Before that, tomorrow, I've got a callback with the Independent Actors Theater. After lunch with an old college friend, before a holiday party at Edge Studio, a birthday party for another college friend, and maybe a cast party for a hilarious stage adaptation of Tommy Wisseau's The Room. Life's still pretty good out here.

Level Up

A couple months ago I came out here with a sublet, a bunch of college credits on my resume, a black and white photo taken by the father of a friend for my headshot (see the little one in the above?), and no job.

You are looking at my new acting headshot photo, to the left. I now have that, a professional acting credit on my resume from a New York theater in the middle of the Broadway theater district, a gig blogging for the most important entertainment industry publication in the city if not the country, four part time jobs that pay me and a fifth that compensates me in voiceover training, an agent that's interested in representing me, and my own one-bedroom apartment.

Cue giant nerdiness: I used to play a lot of video games where you would run around the first level doing tasks, fighting enemies etc until there'd be a little flash and you'd see the words "Level up!" and then a little summary about how all of your attributes have improved, and maybe you've developed some new skills, enabling you to progress further into the game. That's kinda what's happened here. I have levelled up from "Aspiring Actor" to "Beginning Professional Actor."

So. Next steps. My potential agent wants me to get some commercial credits or training on my resume, and will then feel comfortable sending me in for commercial auditions. I may stick with her-- the agency just moved here from Philly and is open about the fact that they'd be sending us back there for most of their auditions. Fine, except we have to foot the bill for travel expenses. I'm thinking I might be able to do better-- I haven't actually put any effort into finding an agent, these people just happened to get my resume from the showbiz expo thing I went to. So if I actually start marketing myself...

My one room apartment is actually the same sublet, only now it's in my name. It's actually grown on me a lot since I last wrote about it. With any luck I'll soon be sleeping on a full-size futon soon, instead of the air mattress plus frame found in the garbage pile. My jobs are all picking up so I think I'll soon be making more than I spend on rent and food, which is exciting. I've got a list tacked next to my desk of things to buy when I start making more than that. Probably half of it is furniture. Oh and I've got two little electric fan heaters from Target that heat the place up quickly and efficiently, plus my brother is giving me an early birthday present of a down comforter, so I'll be plenty warm at home this winter.

I'll complete my voiceover training and soon be able to submit myself with a professionally produced demo for jobs in that front. It's almost as competitive as general acting, but the pay is a lot better. So ideally someday I'll be able to support my "real" acting with my voice acting. In the meantime I'm tutoring a few students in calculus and physics, serving banquets, occasionally moving furniture, and soon, catering.

And as for acting, I just need to keep hitting up Actors Access, Backstage, and Mandy for breakdowns and auditions. And one of these days I'll saunter over to the equity cattle calls for kicks while I'm at it. I've got two different crews who told me before thanksgiving that they wanted me to audition in December, so I'm waiting to hear back from them. So a lot of waiting around, really. Submitting photos and waiting and hoping.

In the meantime, I'll just keep having fun in the city.

This is who it's for

This weekend was great reminder of one of my favorite things about being an actor. It's not quite on stage.

Almost four years ago, I was in a show called "Carthaginians" with University Theater. My character, Hark, spent a good amount of time downstage left, a foot or so from the front row seats. Our third performance, I crossed to the space and immediately recognized who was sitting in the two closest seats. I couldn't look at the faces, but I recognized the shoes. Sitting in front of me in the audience, near enough to reach out and touch, were one of my best friends in University Theater, and my girlfriend who had flown to Chicago from Seattle to see me. I teased them about being a distraction later, but I kind of loved it.

Just this last summer, at ReAct Theater in Seattle, my first professional gig, I was running late to one of my shows. I ran through the lobby about half an hour later than I should have been, and almost shot right past one of my mother's best friends from college. He was one of a huge gang of family friends there, and he told me that they had the entire third row. I didn't look directly, but I knew their laughs, and I could occasionally sneak in a glance. Just for kicks.

Then this last Saturday was the big night. I knew I had a couple people coming. But when I hit the stage, I immediately realized that the entire front row was filled with some of my best friends. From one of my college roommates, another two college friends, one of which I acted with twice and even traveled through a chunk of Europe with, to two of my best friends in New York in the CouchSurfing community, to one of my castmates from back on out reality show with NBC about studying abroad with his girlfriend.

Maybe someday, if I'm incredibly lucky, I'll be playing to big audiences in Broadway theaters or in a major motion picture. But even then, when I know that I've got friends and family in the audience, that will be more of a joy than the fame ever could be. Performing for the ones who really know me, and then getting to meet them after the show.

And this time, Saturday, I could look them right in the face.

You see, this wasn't quite like any show I'd ever done before. This had no respect for the fourth wall. This was laughing by audience interaction. It wasn't just sketch comedy, it was clowning. That meant that sometimes we picked people in the audience and picked on them until they and everyone around them laughed. It was... something outrageous.

What kind of outrageous? Well, aside from a lot of small roles in sketches, I had two major parts, both monologues, directed straight at the audience. Now, I don't get type cast much, luckily, but if I ever am wedged to a type, it's usually the brainy, slightly neurotic, lovable nerd. I've occasionally played tougher, more serious roles. An ex IRA terrorist/freedom fighter, for example. But I knew I was in for something different when, on the first day of rehearsal, I was one of the very few people immediately assigned a role and a script. The script began as follows:

"I've been a whore, gigolo, prostitute, whatever you want to call it for so long it seems to be the only thing I've ever been good at. My first client was one of my mother's friend's. I was 14. My mother was having a big dinner party, and Mrs McKenzie, the pastor's wife asked me to go down with her to the wine cellar. She said she needed some help from a strong, young man..."

That was the tame monologue. The other one starts out with me, surrounded by four dancing girls, declaring to the audience: "I love it when my girlfriend has an orgasm! Especially when I caused it!" You don't get away with saying that kind of anywhere but onstage. Especially when it evolves into playing yourself up as the famous superhero, Orgasm Man (flying from house to house, rescuing women from their mundane sex lives!).

I got to do four shows this last weekend. Two of them had big audiences. One of them was the first show on Saturday, when I had the most parts and when all my friends came this time. Easily my favorite show of the run. There's nothing quite like having all so many of your friends from completely different parts of your life come up after the show to laugh and congratulate you. Even after, or maybe especially after, you've just spent a good chunk of their time telling them all about how you've been a whore.

So, How Did That First Show Go?

One week ago, I was in one of the performing casts of Something Outrageous at the 45th st theater, slated to perform Saturday at 7:30pm. By Tuesday, I was a member of two of the performing casts, Saturday at 7:30, and also at 9:30. On Friday I called my director-in-everything-but-title at 3pm and told him I'd finally gotten headshots for their press kits and sandwich boards, and asked if I could drop them off.

"Yeah. Great. Sure. Actually... can you perform tonight?"

I stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk.

"Um... I guess so. What time?"

"8:30 and 9:30. You'd need to be here at 5pm."

"...Okay."

"Great. See you then."

I was now a member of four performing casts.

The show is made up of comedic scenes and monologues. No two casts do exactly the same set of scenes, but they all draw form the same pool. So I could come in and do the scenes I did for one show easily for the other shows. Not only that, but I saw and heard multiple other actors doing my scenes. Each doing them slightly differently.

The first show had a packed but quiet house. I wish I could tell you exactly what I said, but I know a few more of you are coming to see the show, so I'll save the surprise for later. I'll post a couple highlights after the run is over. I got a few people to laugh, silently, but if there's one thing that scares the living daylights out of a comedy cast, it's an audience that does not laugh out loud. Morale backstage was not good.

Next show, we had three people in the audience. All women. Several scenes call for messing (very gently) with men in the front row. So I and the other two men of the Sunday cast were planted alongside the audience members until we were called upon to do our scenes. The three women laughed and catcalled more than the entire previous audience combined. So while the ticket sales freaked out the people in charge of the theater, we as a cast had the time of our lives.

Then came Saturday. Five shows in one night. Five casts in one tiny little Off-Off Broadway theater, each running through a last minute cue-to-cue with the feeling of an army regiment doing drills in basic training. Fortunately nobody was asked to do pushups. I was in the first and last shows, so I was in that theater from 3pm, when I'd first been asked in to run my biggest monologue with the director until well after 11pm, when the last show ended.

It was a bit of a comedy blur. The people running the open bar were taking every opportunity they could to promote double-fisting among audience members. The audiences were thin, unfortunately. Funnily enough this happens when the theater doesn't do any publicity. But, with the exception of the penultimate show (I wasn't in that cast, so I'm not sure what happened), they all loved it. Except for one particular writer who later gave me an earful about the style and the audience participation bits, but I think everyone else had a pretty good time (and even she said the acting was great).

And if you come next week, so will you. Here's the rundown if you want to see me.

Friday is not the night to see me unless you absolutely can't come on Saturday. If we do the same thing as last week (no promises, it could very easily change) I am featured in one scene at 8:30 on Friday, and have two bit parts at 9:30.

Saturday is much better. I've got two major roles and five cameos at 7:30, and one major role with five cameos at 9:30. The 7:30 show starts promptly on time. Last week, the "9:30" show went on a little after 10pm. Keep in mind that there is an open bar included in the ticket price, and it opens at 7:15. So if you come for the 9:30 show on time, that means a good half hour or more of drinking, if you're into that sort of thing. Seems most of this city is.

So, to recap, if you are in New York and have not yet seen me onstage, come to Something Outrageous at the 45th St Theater, at 354 45th Street, Saturday the 20th at 7:30pm or 9:30pm (or, failing that, Friday the 19th at 8:30pm or 9:30pm). Tickets are $25 and include open bar. Bring a crowd of 10 or more and you get a discount on the tickets. Come, watch, laugh loudly.

See you there!

In New York? Come See My Show!

This is not the actual image for my show. this is just the first thing that comes up when you put "Outrageous" into Google image search. And therefore it quickly became the graphic for the Facebook event. Which is really all the publicity my show has had so far, and probably will have, beyond word of mouth.

The show is Something Outrageous and it's happening at the 45th Street Theater, 354 W 45th St, and it's opening this Saturday with performances at 7:30pm and 9:30pm.

If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that has some new information-- I'm now appearing not in one performance each night, but two. One of the guys in the 9:30 cast had to drop out because of an unspecified personal conflict. So I'm stepping in.

Both shows are $25, and include an open bar. Both shows are going to be hilarious. I'm slightly more heavily featured in the 7:30 one. That said, if you're coming mainly for the open bar, come for the 9:30 show. It will start at least 20 minutes late, and the bar will be open that whole night. The 7:30 will start promptly on time, and I'm not sure how much earlier the bar will be open, probably not much.

So, that's the vital info. But what is the show exactly? So glad that I pretended you asked! It's a sketch comedy show. Think Second City or Saturday Night Live. It's not improvised, but it's very similar in nature to improv. Most of the material is based on sex and dating, and the hilarity therein. If you bring the kids, they just won't get it. If you're offended by any of the following words: Orgasm, Breasts, Balls, Ass, or Corned Beef, then you probably shouldn't come either. Still reading? You'll love it.

See you there!