53 Days In LA

So I'm spending spring in LA. I have a to-do list that revolves around making contacts, having meetings and not being overly distracted by perfect weather. My street smells like blossoms. After wearing knee-high Sorels and trudging through the crazy snowstorm in Toronto a few days ago, it's hard not to be distracted by this blossom-y, perfect weather.

I arrived late last night after a long delay. Can you believe that Tango doesn't give a meal on a flight from TO to LA? That is just asking for some air rage. I tried to buy a sandwich but only had 100 dollar bills USD. They wouldn't take it. I was in this predicament because I had rashly spent every last Canadian penny I had on a quickie manicure in the airport terminal (10-minute mani! Brilliant!) in anticipation of my meeting the next day. Can't go to a meeting with raggedy hands like a mummy who does hard labour, which is what my hands looked like.

This is all to say that I arrived exhausted and starved. And then I got behind the wheel. Every minute I spend driving, I am 100% stressed. There is too much in my visual field. I exercise extreme concentration every time I drive, which I try to do in a zen state because I get lost every single time. I just kind of do concentric circles until I finally hit the target.

This morning I had a meeting with an agent. Now, I will always maintain that I have exceptional talent in the packing department (ask anyone) but this time I did forget one thing, an important thing: toothpaste. Yeah, it might seem easy enough to buy a new tube, but not in the state I was in last night. Plus, I truly had no idea where I was. So I had to plan my entire morning around how to brush my teeth on the way to the meeting.

It revolved around Starbucks. Because I'm not a regular, I realize that I treat Starbucks for what it is, to me - a public washroom available to me on any street corner. The plan was to buy some toothpaste, hit a Starbucks, inhale a latte (no coffee in the apartment) and then brush teeth in the bathroom.

I saw Ice-T at the Starbucks. It was in Beverly Hills. Does he realize that his name is something that is available for sale there? I liked seeing him because it reminded me that people work hard and do regular things like get coffee. Oh geez. I am thinking such LA thoughts already.

The meeting with the agent wasn't noteworthy. I knew nothing would come of it when he started talking about the weather ("Welcome to LA! It's supposed to be 70 degrees all week!").

Walking away from it, I realized that I may need a cheerleader for this whole process. Someone or something that will help me realize that I'm not doing something crazy. That's because I had a thought today, post-meeting. I thought, I'm against beauty pageants, right? They're archaic. But something about this meeting-agents-thing makes me feel like I'm a contestant in a pageant. The only difference is that it's one-on-one, over a longer period of time and behind closed doors. My talent is that I can talk into a mic. Now I feel weird...but I can't afford to think like this. It's only Day One! How do actors do it? They must be maniacs.

I had tried to look nice for the meeting. I wore sky-high heels but didn't drive in them. I put them in a plastic bag and was paranoid that I'd forget them at home by the door and then have to walk in to the meeting in my driving shoes (what am I a senior citizen?) so I checked many times that I had my heels. After the meeting, I took off my patent leather heels and put on my Birkenstocks and drove away. What does it all mean?