Thursday. SR (with 9 people in the class!) and No.8 Conrad Siever. Took direction from T on my first rendition and was very pleased with how it turned out. T gave me a very good. Next week is a discussion on any of the SRs we want to discuss further followed by a grand finale SR performance in two weeks' time. Then it's onto nursery rhymes - seriously!
Home again then off to sunny Santa Clarita to work background (yes, starving artiste with a wife and monkey to support - yes, I do background sometimes) on a Wal-Mart commercial! Thankfully the directions were spot on as the in-car GPS in which the maps haven't been updated in three years (they charge a lot for them!) and it showed me driving off-road (with absolutely NO details at all) as I was looking at huge developments of houses and retail parks. This place has spread like a rash in the last couple of years...
Anyway, this absolutely gigantic WM was to be my office for the next 8 or 9 hours while I stood around showing the camera a shoulder or an ankle or an out-of-focus body - yes, background work is glamourous folks! But, you don't do BG work to be seen, you do it for the money and for the food. The wonderful, amazing, FREE food. Met some nice peeps on the shoot and we passed the time until about 3am when we decided to go shopping. Well, you can't NOT go shopping, can you. It's amazing that there are people actually shopping at 3am but there are. Poor souls who work nights and background artistes, that's who! Dead of night, middle of the desert (SC is in the 100s most months), quiet as a graveyard, save strange people who shop at WM (my god, there were some weirdos, 'largies' and vacant people shopping there while we were shooting... dodgy eyes, inbreds - your typical WM shoppers - no offense). Pretty empty roads for the drive home - one plus point to driving at 3.30 in the morning.

Wednesday. K cried off rehearsal so I went to M's early for SR rehearsal. Picked up littl'un and hit the park where G & R were waiting to film some more stuff for the secret net project. T joined us and we shot some really great conversational stuff. Headed back to my house were T and I shot some more stuff in the studio.

Tuesday. Audition number two for the week and my first for my manager - yeehaa. It's for an MSNBC project and was at one of the old office buildings on Hollywood Blvd. I met the casting director, Jessica, who gives me a brief of what the Director is looking for and in I go. As directed I rant for a minute on my favourite pop-culture subject! It flowed, there was a nice dose of humour and I vented nicely about the pond life that post vids on YT and various other vid sites, about how they are just getting in the way of the really creative people out there which something decent and intelligent to say. The director asked me to vent about another subject (spontaneously, as it were) and then I took a few questions from him and an colleague. On the way out, the CD was effusive about how that was exactly what there were after in terms of personality energy, etc. Great!
Dropped into BGPlayers to see DK and drop off a script for him to submit to his funding partners. Had a long chat about various things.

Monday. Section 2(!) of the Pillowman, first read, with K. It went really well. We went moment to moment, really took each other in and were open and affected. T was really pleased and he gave us direction on what to concentrate on in rehearsals. The rest of the class were also on pretty good form.
Headed out to my first audition for a couple of months (or so it seems) for a Microsoft web advert. It was a workout in which I had to gather up papers from a desk and negotiate a bunch of obstacles before... well, I don't want to give everything away. It was fun though and I worked up a sweat! Makes a change from most of the auditions I have to go on.

Sunday
M to AZ
Monkey & I went to Underwood Family Farm for a Cowboy Halloween!! Fantastic fun. A Yodeling cowboy called Sourdough Slim was fantastic and we sat and watched him for ages. Littl'un decided it would be fun to pretend to play an imaginary piano accompaniment to his tunes. Tons of pumpkins, of course, and the freshest popcorn you've ever tasted!