Clothing Casserole

Ingredients:

• 1 shirt on your person as you travel an hour in 90-degree heat and humidity to a film shoot (the sweatier the better)
• 2 pairs of nice shoes... that are still in Ohio. Make sure you then wear your Keds to all auditions.
• 1 "casually professional" job-interview outfit worn to your active physical therapy appointment, where they promptly ask you, "do you need somewhere to change?", to which you confidently & matter-of-factly reply, "No, this is unfortunately what I'm wearing today", which the kind receptionist doesn't know how to reply to
• 10 minutes that you JUST missed getting seen at an EPA (Equity Principle Audition, aka a cattle call) after they called the first 10 names on the non-Equity list, of which you were SIXTH. There's an essential order in which these 10 min. must be obtained:

1. Wake up with just enough time to not realize that you were wearing dark navy underwear under a pale peach dress (if this has now gotten too personal for you, please understand this is for the common good)
2. Look around you at the audition. Notice that your choice of Keds was indeed not a good idea.
3. Take the audition monitor's "go shopping at Forever 21! they have a sale!" advice when she releases all the non-Eqs until 2pm (when lunch is over)
4. Spend 12pm-1pm searching in Forever 21 for not nly appropriate audition footwear but also, hey, why not an audition dress, seeing as you (secretly) borrowed your roommate's at 6:15 that morning! While you're there, realize...
5. REALIZE that ANYONE can see your UNDERWEAR through your dress! HOW DID YOU MISS THAT?? 
6. After 4 rounds of dressing room fun (lolz) & the alarming realization that you no longer want all of the dresses in all of the stores (is it because I'm now 22 in a Forever 21?? are we truly not 21 in our hearts forever?????), decide to just buy a new pair of underwear. Now you can,
7. Go back to the audition and change! 
8. Walk upstairs to the waiting room to meet a nice, clean 2:00 pm in the face, where you find that... that... the monitor called the names at:
9. 1:45.
10. [INSERT LEARN THE HARD WAY LESSON HERE]
11. Wait 2 more hours and be very grateful you were still seen.

Instructions:

Now, it's important to note that not all of these ingredients will be available if you DO YOU LAUNDRY. This week's lesson is DO YOUR LAUNDRY. 

Here's a thought: we don't do our laundry because it's inconvenient. It takes time, it takes gathering quarters, it takes lugging all of your dirty clothes and those huge, huge bottles of soap down stairs and the street to a laundromat, ew! Why not not wait until doing your laundry equals feelings of annoyance and desperation? Why not avoid the inevitable psychology of "I have to do it, so I don't want to do it?" There's gonna be a day/night where you're sitting around, perhaps between breakfast and lunch or after you finish a huge email project, and you could either clean your room, watch a Netflix documentary, bake, or search for hours on Backstage.com. Instead of deciding which one of these non-time-sensitive things you can do for hours, why not pick another mindless activity that will benefit you in the long run? One that prevents future sweaty endeavors, awkward physical therapy sessions, and just plain wrong audition-wear? Do yourself a solid and treat your clothes as they should be treated-- not as inconvenient chores, but as options for a colorful, comfortable appearance. 

(...that'll be the day...)

* Brought to you by Downy fabric softener, the high upgrade from the box of dryer sheets that I used for 4 years *

Your First Recipe (7/30-8/4)

Ingredients: 

• 15 extra minutes you should've added to your travel time so you wouldn't be 15 minutes late to your meeting at InStyle Magazine (for babysitting, but still. The Editor.)
• 1 wrong turn out of the subway station that holds you in an underground labyrinth of bougie-- nope, simply high end shops & salad restaurants for at least 5 minutes, a long time for one to feel stuck underground before your job interview in Rockefeller Plaza
• $xxx.xx of rent threatened to be withheld from your leasing office = risking being sued and charged for the management's court fees

To ensure you do this correctly, make sure you have this:

and this:


but know that this is also a thing:



(Needless to say, I was looking for a little hot water. Needless to say, I didn't win 8th grade Mock Trial Lawyer of the Year for nothing.)

• $3.52 + a fair amount of wasted time at a Whole Foods because you don't check for free WIFI before you make your purchase
• A 3rd-day-in-a-row that you spend in a significantly nicer neighborhood than your own, which makes you feel like apartment browsing, just to "look" (For any New Yorkers who'd like to know, I left a rainy dark Inwood & emerged from the subway in a sunny farmer's market in Union Square. There were dogs in baskets.)
• 1 street festival spanning the length of every bus stop that you need to use. It...keeps going...I just...

Instructions:
Before you mix all of the ingredients for a recipe together, here's a thought: make sure you read it. Like, if your recipe happens to be on Google Maps, don't assume you'll figure it out as you go along. Why not write it out beforehand? Learn that you can't do everything all at once and that subways suck, and that's pretty much the only reason why you can't do everything at once. If the NY subway system were always reliable, then you could be as priceless as a Mastercard. Unfortunately, it likes to be a jerk and make you late and want to turn into the negative Nancy you've never been-- if you have unrealistic expectations. So, read the recipe. Know what you're getting yourself into. This may mean understanding well in advance that every Whole Foods you'll see for the beginning week of this recipe may make you all warm and tingling inside, like home. Or that you need to develop a sharp tongue and bull-crap receptors a mile long to detect money-scamming snakes, in the form of leasing agents and furniture salesmen. Prepare yourself for the worst-- with your Google Maps/HopStop, Free WIFI app, and mock trial lawyer skills-- and you'll have these guys running for the hills.

Antidote: 

8 episodes of "Orange is the New Black" + a free gym membership to Equinox + 1 tour of the NY Story Pirates office + a pinch of local terminology (Columbus Circle, Union Square, West Village, Washington Square Park, Upper West Side, Mr. Softee)

An Explanation

Hello. Or, as I say in my new neighborhood, "hola." 

Here is the deal: I don't like blogs. I don't. But I like to write and pressure myself to write, and I find blogs are generally pretty public. [As noted in my previous blog, I like to call these things "Public Internet Diaries" (PIDs), and in a pretty negative way, too. However, I've obviously settled deeper into the idea of writing one, though, so, as far as hypocrites go, I can't be so negative anymore.] My blog, though, will be slightly different from many online journals. I'm a little self-effacing, so I don't wish to share what's going on in my everyday life with the general public; if I pass the most beautiful hydrangea or hideous bolero, I'm gonna call my mom or dad in, like, a heartbeat and they'll find it totally cool and we'll all be satisfied. Instead, I enjoy writing as a form of... for a lack of a better word, let's just say "entertainment." Namely, purposeful to YOU. The reader. The voyeur. The... the..

OK, seriously, I can barely concentrate because someone is blasting some severely saucy music outside. We're gonna cut this explanation short:

52 weeks. 1 year, if math isn't your strong suit. 1 recipe a week. Endless amounts of ingredients, I'm sure, including such tasty innards as:
- 1 5-story walk-up
- 1 stress fracture in your foot
- apprx. 10 boxes of shtuff, plus pinches of oddly shaped bags and pointy objects
- 99 degrees of heat
- 0 parking spots

These ingredients will add up to one gourmet recipe a week that will teach us all a little something about living in the city, surviving your first year out of college, making your way in the acting biz, or just how to not embarrass yourself in a myriad of common sense situations. Seeing as I'm a recently graduated actor who just moved to NYC, plan on an emphasis on the first 3, which so far tend to include the fourth. All of them, true recipes for disaster that you should maybe avoid.

For example, the lesson I'd type up about this first recipe, which is just one day and not an entire week, would have something to do with, I don't know, resting every injury with care: if you keep living your life without tending to said injury, it's going to complicate something much more meaningful to you than the small events you participated in instead of resting up. Your health-- mind and body-- is the most essential part of your life (literally), way more important than wearing the highest heels with a sprained ankle, partying all night when you are coming down with a cold, etc. Also, always have paper towels or hand wipes on hand because you never know who'll be sweating. 

Make sense?

I'll be posting my first real recipe for this current last week of July this Sunday. In the meantime, I hope we can all do what Mark Twain said and live large by learning large: If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way. Hold on to your cats-- here we go!