I’m sitting in my bedroom, listening to the leave-blower blowing the shit out of things outside my window, listening to the thrum of whatever the hell my neighbor is constantly listening to and I can only hear the thrum of it, listening to my roommate explore French online apparently. And I wonder why I can’t get any work done at home! The roommate thing, no big deal. We share space, we share noise. It’s the general outside crap that I have no control over that makes me crazy!! And in this neighborhood, if it’s not the leaf-blower, it’s the skate-kids out front jumping cars and ramps and small children or it’s the evil ice cream truck and its very frightening calliope version of “It’s A Small World” that sounds like something Stephen King would write. Or it’s the wonderful mariachi music played out of blown-out speakers from some idiot’s truck parked under my window. What I would give for just some peace and quiet from the outside world for a bit. At least with the Roomie, I can ask for some peace and quiet. The outside world doesn’t listen so much to that.
On top of that, I had the wonderful experience of one-sided conversations this afternoon. After I finished my first day on the job with my new, very cool, very connected boss, I headed up to the Starbucks where my sweet Peter works as it’s sort of on my way home, in a weird, round-about way. I thought I’d stop in and tease him about his Irish blog. He wasn’t working so I thought I’d grab a hot chai, sit outside and work on the on-going Cinderella rewrite. Now, Peter had warned me that this Starbucks is definitely an industry hang-out. No problem. So is Priscilla’s in Burbank, where I used to always hang out.
He wasn’t kidding. I saw more Ibooks and laptops up there than at CompUSA. And just feel the schmoozing going on. I got my chai, I sat down, laid out all of my blatant self-promotion, because that’s the kind of industry-whore I am. I had “Hazard County” 2 for $20 cards (thanks, Chairman) and Cinderella CD’s conveniently strewn across the table. I turned on my Nano, put in my earplugs, turned on the Ibook, and, promptly, some musician guy came up and asked about “Hazard.” I was more than happy to talk about the show because I love it and it features one of my favorite people, as well as a couple I also like a lot. And he was very nice and we had a lovely chat about music and movies and plays. About 15 minutes later, he said thank you, have a nice day and split.
Then came the Guy with the Dog. Okay, I had been watching Guy with the Dog trying to find a place to sit outside. Of course, most people (including me) were singles sitting at tables for four. I had my purse on one chair and my messenger bag on the other to kind of discourage sitting and chatting. Chatting is quicker if someone can’t sit with you. So after Guy with the Dog hit everyone else, he quickly grabbed the seat I had cleared for Musician Guy (cuz he was kinda cute, too, so…). But Guy with the Dog, definitely not cute. He could have been a pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean.
So he picks up a “Hazard” card and we have a brief discussion about it. I tell him about Chairman, since that’s who signed the 2 for $20 and told him if he saw the show to tell Chairman hi. Then I turned back to my computer but Guy with the Dog wanted to talk theater more. This might have been interesting had he even had a clue of what he was talking about. He was one of those, “Oh, I go to theater all the time” but never heard of any of the playwrights I threw at him. He knew enough to sound like he knew what he was talking about but I can smell bullshit a mile away and this man reeked of it. He studied at the Actor’s Studio. Okay, it’s the one here in LA which has almost nothing to do with Lee Strasberg’s Actor’s Studio in New York, other than the name and some minimal connection through Lee’s second wife. I mentioned that I studied under Susan Straberg and he was on off on how he had studied with Lee once (I’m sure it was one class) and I tried to nod politely.
Then began the one-sided conversation that has become an art in this industry. I won’t call it a monolog because they often insert a question for you to answer. But when you start to answer, they stare at you blankly for about 30 seconds, pretend like they’re listening while they’re figuring out what clever piece of shit they’re going to tell you next, then they interrupt you to tell you the aforementioned piece of shit. I was stuck with Guy with Dog for about 30 minutes. I tried politely checking my cell phone, praying that someone had called. I tried interrupting and actually completing a comment about Cinderella, since he asked about the CD. I got as far as “I’m producing and directing the film…” and he was off on another bullshit tangent. I packed up my Nano, put my earphones away, shut down my computer, packed my bag and stood up and he was still having his one-way conversation with me. I told him I had to go and write the film I had been trying to tell him about but he never stopped talking. I stood there for a moment, then said, “Gotta pee,” and headed into the Starbucks without stopping to see if he even noticed that I was gone. When I came back out, he had some poor women with two little girls trapped, talking expertly about dog breeds. I waved and practically ran to my car before he could engage me once again in his little pathetic diatribe.
My head was ringing as I drove away. I couldn’t wait to get home and take a nap (really, really early morning trying to get things done before the new job). I wanted peace and quiet for maybe a half hour to nap and then maybe write.
Now we’re back to the French thrumming leaf-blower portion of the day. I guess I can always put in my earplugs, crash with the door closed (although Roomie is done with the French lesson for the day but the outside world continues), and feel the vibration of Twyla’s purr.
But now I’m hungry and that begets a whole other set of issues….
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