Relentless

LA is a relentless city. If you slow down it doesn't wait up for you, it just keeps moving forward, people keep moving up the chain, meeting new people, making new friends, life is never static. The traffic is relentless. Even on a Saturday afternoon I find myself in a forty-five minute drive from Silverlake to the Palisades, I don't even want to talk about what it's like at rush hour. The people are relentless, always smiling, always happy to meet you, unless they sense they are above you, in which case they are relentlessly pursuing someone they sense is higher up than they are and can't be bothered with your presence.

There is no security here. Most people that have jobs know that they could end at any moment and be right back at the bottom. Others are worked to the bone so hard they can't justify continuing, though they usually do anyway. Some people are in both of these situations. People are forced to spend night after night in tiny and noisy studio apartments in the barren wasteland known as Hollywood.

And all for what? For that freedom to pursue whatever the hell it is you want to do and in those moments, where you can brush off your job and all the fake smiles and all the Ed Hardy shirts and just live in your passion and feel like no one controls your destiny but you. For me I feel it during an improv show.

--

I was asked for my salary requirements from "Stan and Deliver" on Friday. I am so close to getting this job it is ridiculous. The interview went really well. He knew a bit about improv, his son is on a troupe called "The Improvabilities" in a school in Maine, which is funny because my improv troupe in college was called improvability. We also talked about shows at the theater, like "I Love Movies" with Doug Benson. We really hit it off. I think it's safe to say it was the best interview I've ever been on.

After hearing this I was feeling good and decided to get some drinks with Kristin and Jace at the Red Lion. This is probably my favorite bar in LA. They have great German beers and it's really cozy. We did sing alongs with the piano player. Eventually Stefan and Jordan, then Justin, and another improv buddy, Danny Cohen came and met up with us.

I've been making new pals with people from the UCB community recently and Danny is one of them. He cracks me up when he's on stage and like most improvisors, he's just a really nice, sort of insecure dude.

After that we headed back to Jace and Justin's. It was good hanging with Justin, I haven't seen him much since I was in the hospital. We listened to records and shot the shit back at their place and Gilli and Nick came over. I was dancing around the room drinking water out of a glass with a crazy straw like an idiot because I'd had a few drinks. It felt good to let loose a bit. At the end of the night Jace and I watched Apollo 13 but I fell asleep on the couch in like five minutes.

--

I wrote Chris about Kim expressing my argument in the most logical and coherent way possible, in a last ditch effort to explain why we should work this out now, but it's not going to happen, so I'm going to stop talking about it. It's too bad, the longer it goes, the more the trust is broken for me, but that is just how it will have to be. This will be the last I write about it for a while, I think.