LA scouting report

My scouting journey ended on Wednesday night as I hopped on the red-eye back to Michigan. I've been a zombie since, so bear with me.

I'll get this part over with. No job yet, no place to live. 

After spending three full weeks in LA and having no tangible changes to my situation other than a full e-mail outbox and intriguingly long fingernails (packing oversight), I'm holding out and calling the trip a success.

I'll tell you 5 things that happened which I'm excited about.

In no particular order (besides ascending in importance).

5.  Smart & Funny Girls want to make Smart & Funny Things

79% of my time in LA was spent at Starbucks. And probably 96% of my bank account.

During a coffee-fueled rampage one afternoon, I was trying to educate myself in the world of online news. After spending 4 minutes reading the LA times I found myself on Twitter. I've always appreciated the humor of smart and funny girls and, and in the past few months, have been in awe by the talents of a few of my friends. So, to take advantage of their wit (AND BECAUSE I'M SO THOROUGH AND CONSISTENT WITH MY ONLINE PRESENCE), I decided that we need to make comedy/advice/girl-produced website. Not Hellogiggles, though. Don't get me started.

So, I contacted three of the smartest and funniest girls that I know and we're in the works of putting something together. STAY TUNED.

4. Grown-Up Partying

After getting together with the Not So Scary Man's Daughter (who also took his advice and moved here 5 years ago) she's been helping me with the job/housing search. My second Saturday in LA, she invited me to a party with grown-ups.

To say I was a little nervous about going to this party would be like saying my mom is a little nervous about me moving to California. AKA it's a gross understatement.

BUT, I went and the party turned out to be the most awesome thing ever. If only I'd had a little less pride and took pictures, I could have captured how grown-up the party actually was.

It was American Flag themed: as you can see, the decorations were off-the-hook. And don't even get me started on the food. American Flag cake pops, Buffalo Chicken Dip that made me want to eat nothing else ever again, AND a S'more bar. (you put marshmallows on these cute little kabob sticks and roast them over these tiny decorative flames inset in a rock display). All the while, I was surrounded by established, put-together, Los Angelens who have real-person jobs in the industry.

I made a lot of great connections, listened in horror a story about shrooms, nodded nonchalantly at names I didn't recognize, ate 17 cake pops, and didn't even spill on myself.

The girl who hosted the party is having another one in December, so I won't be doing anything but anticipating it from now until then.

3. Getting the Ball Rolling

I've been palling around with a teammate's sister who is in the same boat as me (except she's employed and not a general disaster). On Saturday, Lexi introduced me to a bunch of people she graduated from film school with. A lot of them are near our age and freshly moved to LA. We got to talking and, miraculously, they like the idea of a rap music video that Klare and I wrote back in February. We'd planned on shooting it in Lansing but never our act together. But now that I'm in the land of opportunity, we're going to make it happen!!
So, during breaks in the job/housing search, Klare and I have been e-meeting to work on rap rewrites.
After the wedding this weekend, we'll meet with our music extraordinaire to lay down some sick beats and put us on course to shoot it in LA late August.

2. The Luckiest Break

I had the fortunate privilege of meeting with a writer who graduated from MSU and has seen a lot of success in the industry the past 15 years. We had coffee my first week in LA and he gave me a lot of straight-forward, genuinely helpful advice. He's bee encouraging me to take improv classes, something I've been interested in for a while, and has been helping me figure out the whole job thing. At the end of our convo he offered for me to keep sending him my work so he can give me feedback/help my writing fully form and that he'll eventually pass my work on to his agent. So, yes, I haven't slept since then.

1. Finding the Meaning of My Life

(this wouldn't be a blog post about my life if it didn't include extreme at least one irrationally bold statement)
After a lot of digging into research about improv in LA, I discovered there are a lot of great training grounds for comedy. (go figure) In true fashion, one club stood out the most because they require an audition in order to get into a more elite program. The curriculum is designed for professional actors buuuuut auditions are free so I obv signed up. (I took a life-guarding class to learn how to swim, so at least this ignorant overcommitment can't result in drowning)

The Groundlings is known as a breeding ground for SNL stars, so I was giddy with excitement to see a show. The theater was really cozy and sold-out with an audience ready and willing to laugh. The performers were animated, genuine and believable. Even with all that, it was the all-encompassing sense of community that the theater provided which solidified that I want to be a part of it.

Sorry, that got sappy and weird. I actually took notes about all that I felt while there and will spare you the psychotic-sounding details.

So, for now, I'm really jazzed about what lies ahead, because it's really, really cool.

The Adventures of Couch

So, I started writing this a week ago and am picking it back up now. We'll see how it turns out.

I'll give the sparknotes version of my first week.

My First Friday: I spent 2 hours packing and unpacking my bag to nervously avoid making phone calls. I'd like to point out how much I regret nicknaming the producer who convinced me to move "The Scary Man". It's a lot harder to cold call someone when you have them in your phone as Scary Man.

He is really a nice man. I called and left him a nice little shaky-voice message after three failed attempts. (I learned you can press 1 to re-record). Somehow he understood me enough to call back later on. He actually laughed when I told him that I'd listened to him and has since done a lot to help me get started out here.

Periodically between my other phone-calls, I'd take breaks to swim with Milkshake.

This is just an excuse to put in pictures of Milkshake

After all the scary stuff, I had my first weekend in Cali!

On Saturday, we had breakfast in a really cute diner in North Hollywood. The walls were covered in  cool old photographs of actors but I didn't take any pictures because I felt awkward.

That night, we went to see a movie in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

It's a really weird and kinda cool concept. A lot of stars are buried in this cemetery so we got to enjoy their stunning on-screen performances while their bodies rotted just feet away.

I'm as nervous as I look.

Mason's friends are all really cool and have truly been troopers putting up with my debilitating shyness.

On Sunday, they took me to the beach!

As soon as we got there, we were informed that there was a save in-progress. Apparently, two young girls climbed up the side of the cliff and got stuck about 50 feet up.

Apparently the only people less capable to get down from a precipice than those two girls were their rescuers.

It took them an hour and a half to finally lower the girls to safety.

In the process, we got to witness the attempted save from a chopper. They chopper save failed but it was a lot of fun to watch. If you look on the left you can see the man hanging from the chopper and our two little adventurers stuck on the mountain. #beachentertainment

 

After all that was over we went back to seeing other cool things like sea lions and dolphins.

Two of the kids we were hanging with are from Colorado so they took me on a barefoot climbing adventure. We got to see some tide pools, touch anemone and see gigantic starfish. It was awesome.

The next day I got wheels!!

I ran to enterprise then sweated in their lobby for an hour. 

After that, I really hit this town by storm.

In the midst of exploring I drove halfway up a mountain then cruised down going 60 in neutral. It was really, really thrilling. But these runs are gonna suck.

 

Oh okay, cool.

Lastly, here's a pic of my home these past few weeks, hence, the nickname "Couch".

Despite not knowing my actual name, the guys I'm staying with are really cool.

I'll update the past week of adventuring in a bit. For now, Couch is out.

A little of topic in this context, but supports my newest priority: "Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the porpoise of instruction. No, read in order to live." -Gustave Flaubert