Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Don't Put Your Daughter On The Stage, Mrs. Worthington

Joy Dewing (@jdcasting) asks:

If Krumholz expresses a desire to be in showbiz, how will you react and how do you predict you will handle it?

Very easy.  The second the kid expresses any interest in show business I will ground it until it's 18.

Here's the deal, it's not that I think children are necessarily ruined by becoming professional actors.  I just think that children should be children and not have professional careers of any kind until they can have a better understanding of what they might be getting into.  You can't tell a 9-year-old that while acting is lots of fun now, at some point it will become their means of survival and be a whole let less fun and whole lot more work (if they decide to continue with it, that is.).  It's like telling a 5-year-old they can't be a unicorn.  Good luck getting them to understand logic.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about theater training programs for kids.  It's one thing to sign your kid up for ballet or tap or jazz classes, it's another thing all together to to have your kid taking audition preparation classes.  There are a lot of classes that are marketed around getting your kid on Broadway and I just think that's the wrong approach.  If a kid does express an interest in acting, why not bring them to the next round of auditions at the local community theater?  Why do they suddenly need to become Baby June?  I wonder how many child actors actually said "I want to be an actor" before their parents decided for them that that's what they would do.  I think the majority of child actors were pushed into the business very young by over zealous parents and don't know life any other way. 

That said, I have friends who teach those "how to get on Broadway" classes, and I don't mean to disparage their chosen profession.  If there are suckers who want to pay you to teach their kid "the art of auditioning", teach away.  It's their money to waste.  Though I wonder if it might not be kind of the teachers to gently pull some parents aside and say, "You're kid is never going to be good at this.  You might want to save your money."  But of course that doesn't happen. 

I can only speak from my experience.  I was lucky in that I had no training at all and just thought trying acting might be fun and I got the first bunch of things I auditioned for.  That may sound boastful, or whatever, but it's actually the way it happened, so don't go hyperventilating.  I was in the right place at the right time and I had a lot of luck.  Many of the kids I worked with who were specifically trained to be actors/singers/dancers had parents who were insufferable shitheads.  I saw parents get into physical fights over auditions their children had or didn't have.  I was the victim of one stage parent who couldn't handle the fact that I got The Secret Garden over her kid that she ended up TELLING PEOPLE I WAS A HEROIN ADDICT.  She actually cost me work and hurt my reputation.  ANYONE who worked with her kids will tell you she was a hideous monster.  Literally, you say her name and people cringe.  I am willing to bet a lot of money that you will not find a single person I worked with who has anything other than lovely memories of my parents (except possibly the house manager at The Broadway Theater who got REAMED by my mother when she locked me in my dressing room and forbade me from taking curtain call or going to dinner because she decided my dressing room was too messy.).  That's because while my parents were supportive of my choice to be an actor, they were not typical stage parents.  They were just as surprised as I was when I gained success so quickly and they were mindful that school should come first.  If, when I was in Les Miz, my grades had suddenly plummeted, I doubt I would have even had the chance to audition for The Secret Garden.  My parents' priorities were in the right place.  And they were able to carry on conversations with adults I was working with about other things than my career.  No one cares that your kid just had a callback for a Frosted Flakes commercial.  Open a newspaper.

Maybe that's what I have the real problem with; the stage parents.  Spending thousands of dollars on lessons and headshots and everything else they think it takes to "make it" in show business, when the likelihood of ever actually "making it" is miniscule, is asinine.  You want your kid to take karate after school?  Or learn how to play the piano or speak French or play chess?  Fine.  You want your kid to be a Broadway "star", go take a deep breath and reassess your priorities.  

There are those kids who have a bit of a career when they're young and somehow manage to escape show business as they get older.  If someone could guarantee me that this would be they way it would go for my kid, I'd be okay with him or her trying out acting professionally.  But the stresses of show business are not stresses I would wish on anyone.  Little kids can't make informed decisions about their futures, so why would we think they should begin a career in any field, let alone one that sucks out your soul and leaves icy, cold air in its place?  Please understand, I love acting.  But I wouldn't wish a life in show business on my worst enemy.

That said, college tuition is likely to cost over $300,000 by the time my kid is 18, so you can bet your ass I'm going to try to get my kid in as many commercials as I possibly can until it's about 5-years-old.

If that doesn't work I am going to start gently suggesting a career in plumbing or exotic dancing as early as I can.


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Mandy

In the fall of 1990 Inigo Montoya took me to Disneyland.  Technically Mandy Patinkin took me to Disneyland, but besides having just worked with him in the workshop of The Secret Garden, I really only knew him as Inigo Montoya.  For some reason we were both in Los Angeles.  I have no idea why I was in L.A.  He was probably here because he was Mandy Patinkin.  Anyway, he took me to Disneyland before we started rehearsals for the Broadway production.  He said it was so we could bond.  It didn’t matter why we were going.  It was a free trip to Disneyland with Inigo Montoya.

School was in session, so the park was pretty empty.  We didn’t have to wait in line to get on Pirates of the Caribbean or Space Mountain.  He bought me a giant lollipop that was easily twice the size of my head, and all the funnel cake and soda I could shove in my face.  It was pretty awesome.  Until…

We came upon a family somewhere in Adventure Land.  A mother, a father, a couple of kids and an old woman, probably about 113-years-old, who was hunched over so severely from being ancient that her face was parallel to the ground.  Clearly she was suffering from Osteoporosis at the very least.  There’s a strong possibility she was also a hunchback, though past a certain age, who can tell?  She did have some kind of protuberance on her right shoulder, so let’s just go ahead and call her hunchback.

Imagine, if you will, that you’re 11-years-old at Disneyland with a famous method actor who is just about to go into rehearsals for a show in which he plays a hunchback and you come across a real life, honest-to-goodness hunchback.  Never mind that the hunchback you find is a thousand year old, female Quasimoto, while said famous actor is going to be playing a middle aged man who, aside from the physical deformity of a hunch on his shoulder, is otherwise in perfect health.

It’s not just that we followed this old lady through Disneyland merely observing her movements.  No, no.

I’m not sure if I can adequately convey the sheer mortification I felt as I followed Mandy Pantinkin for miles around Disneyland while he PHYSICALLY MIMICED this poor, crippled old lady.  Hunching over and kind of dragging his left foot behind him, so that just in case they didn’t see him lurking a few paces behind them, inexplicably aping their little, old grandma, they would surely hear the dragging of his shoe across the glimmering asphalt.

Somehow it took someone in this family over an hour to notice us.  The father turned, saw Mandy, hunched over, craning his neck up so he wouldn’t walk into buildings, and gasped.  I took my giant lollipop, which, despite having licked at it for hours was still roughly the size of Rhode Island, and did my best to disappear behind it.

“Oh, my gosh, y’all!” The man hollered.

“Here we go,” I thought.

“Ain’t you Inigo Montoya??”

I could hear Mandy’s spine cracking as he finally unfolded himself into a normal upright position.

“Yes,” he said.

“Well, shit!  HEY GRAMMA!  YOU REMEMBER THAT MOVIE I SHOWED YOU LAST NIGHT?”

“What?” said Gramma.

“This here’s the star!  Shit!”

“I gotta use the toilet,” said Gramma.

Someone shoved a disposable camera in my hand.  I took a picture of Mandy Patinkin and the family and the top of Gramma’s head.

As the day finally came to an end and we headed toward the gate Mandy said,

“It’s been really nice getting to know you.”

Recently someone sent me a link to an interview Mandy gave in which he referred to me as “that little girl.”

It truly was a magical day of bonding.




Sunday, March 24, 2013

In Which I Almost Murder My Dog




Recently we bought a couple training collars for Chicken and Sally to try to (finally) get them to stop pulling and being generally out of control on walks.  Sally is 17 pounds and is, usually, the sweetest, most chill dog you will ever know: 
 
Put her around other dogs and she will lunge and bark regardless of their size or possible ferocity.

Chicken:
likes to bite people.  It's awesome.  It used to be only people on bicycles (which, if you're riding your bike on the sidewalk, you deserve to be bitten by a 20 pound snub-nosed dog), and then it inexplicably became pretty much anyone.  There is no rhyme or reason behind it.  He also pulls like one of those creepy iron man dudes. 
I bet this guy has a HUGE penis.


And probably, if he could talk he would sound like one of them.

Considering how much trouble I already have controlling them, we figured we should try to do something about it before I have to also add a baby into the equation.  So we bought a couple training collars.  They look like this:

 
Except they have leather woven through the chain so they're a little more comfortable.  Now, before you go giving me your "expert" advice (unless you actually are a dog training expert), we have tried all manner of other leads and collars, from halties to those awful pronged collars.  This option seems to be working the best so far.  You give it a gentle tug with some kind of verbal command when your dog is being a dick and he or she chills out.  Sally is lunging less and Chicken is no longer able to drag me down the street behind him like a sack of potatoes.  Or a Mack truck.

During our afternoon walk on Friday, listening to an archived episode of This American Life about taxes and small government on my phone, I turn down a street I have walked many times before and out of nowhere a Spaniel of some kind and a Golden Retriever (Or a yellow Lab.  They all look the same to me.) come tearing up to their gate barking and generally having a panic attack at my dogs.  Apparently the training collars only work sometimes.  Despite my best efforts, Chicken and Sally are straining against the collars to get to the gate.  Meanwhile they're also wrapping themselves around my legs, which, I heard a story once about a couple of dogs doing that to their person and she fell and ended up getting eaten by a pack of wolves.  Or Pitbulls.  Or Coyotes.  Whatever.  I'm trying to get myself untangled while Ira Glass is going on in my ear about a town in Colorado that turned off its street lights and stopped maintaining public parks, and yelling "Leave it, God damn it!" (That is official dog training language.) and the next thing I know Sally's leash goes slack.  I look down and she's no longer attached to it.  She's making her way to the gate which she can easily slip under and I'm imagining these two strange dogs ripping her to shreds.  In the middle of all this, a couple out for a stroll have stopped and are watching this whole thing play out, so I'm also acutely aware that my performance is being judged.  So, now I'm yelling "Sally!" at the top of my lungs and trying to grab her before she can slip away, but I've still got Chicken to deal with.  So, I grab a chunk of Sally's hair while she yelps and I manage to put Chicken's leash under my foot to prevent him from getting too far.  Now that I have Chicken secured I slip Sally's collar back over her head and everything is under control.  Except I still have to move away from these God damned hell hounds that are flipping out on the other side of the gate.  In my ear some millionaire hotel owner is talking about how to fix city government and I start to walk away.  I feel a dead weight on the end of Chicken's leash.  I look down and he's laying on his side, not moving.  His eyes were open but he clearly wasn't going anywhere.  Everything went silent.  I'm sure the shithead dogs behind the gate were still going at it and the millionaire was still droning on about health care costs, but I couldn't hear anything except my own voice moaning "Oh, God" over and over again.  I rub his sides like I've seen doctors do to newborns who aren't breathing in the countless birthing videos I've watched.  And just like that he pops up like nothing happened and I maneuver my asshole dogs away from the other asshole dogs to safety.  Finally I wrench the earbuds out of my ears in time to hear the man who had watched the whole thing ask if I was okay.  

"She slipped out of her leash," I explained.  "And then he was..."  What was I going to say?  Almost strangled to death?  BY ME.

"Yeah, I know.  We saw."

"Awesome."  

In my imagination as they walked away they whispered to each other, "She's going to be a terrible mother."

And of course, that's what I kept repeating to myself for the rest of the day.  "I'm going to be a terrible mother."  I spent the evening apologizing to Chicken and coddling him and cringing at what might have happened.  What if he had completely passed out?  What if he had stopped breathing?  I don't know dog CPR.  I don't know baby CPR.  I try not to think about the myriad ways Krumholtz might get hurt because it's completely overwhelming and terrifying.  Every piece of baby equipment that arrives comes with a booklet of warnings.  Choking hazards and suffocating hazards and broken neck hazards and SIDS hazards. Not to mention all the things you can't do anything to prevent like disease.  Thank God we don't live in Syria.  I don't know how people do it.  Just anticipating the constant worry is enough to send me to bed.

So, I signed up for a baby CPR course, had a glass of wine (which probably means my baby will be an alcoholic) and set about reading the 50 pages booklet of warnings that came with the new crib.  Maybe I will be a terrible mother.  But at least I can say I tried.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Let Me Entertain You

I'm having trouble with the whole thinking portion of my life these days.  It feels a lot like everything is just about being pregnant and preparing for this human.  But I want to keep my blog rolling, so I'm turning to you kids out there in readersville for suggestions and inspiration.

What would you like to hear about?  What can I do to amuse you?  Do you have any pressing questions for me?

Leemee a comment and let me blow your minds.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Who Designed These Packages??

Yesterday we met our back up doctor, Dr. Chin.  He is lovely.  He clearly believes in home births and seems to have a good relationship with our midwife.  And we hope to never see him again.

Dr. Chin did an ultrasound (likely the last we will have) to do some official doctory-type checking.  Turns out our little bundle of joy isn't so little.  S/he's measuring a week ahead of schedule. Given that Kurt and I are fairly small people, we're not sure what business Krumholtz has becoming a giant.  Very inconsiderate...

We also received this adorable onesie yesterday from our good friend Andrew: 

 

Cute, right?  Never mind that it's fleece and we live in southern California and it will be August when the baby will fit into it.  I registered for it because it's damned cute.  So, whatever.

Anyway,  here is a picture of the box it came in:



The box is over three feet long and 10 inches wide.  The onesie is sized for a 15 pound person.  In case you're having trouble visualizing the odd size discrepancy, here's a picture of how it looked when we opened the box:






The brown thing next to the onesie is the "padding", included, I presume, to prevent the fleece onesie from... breaking.  The giant, protruding purple orb is my belly.

The same day I learn that Krumholtz's design is larger than his packaging, I receive a large package whose contents are far too small for it.

The universe mocks me.  And so does Amazon.