The Thirty-One-Day, Ten-Hour and Twelve-Minute Sprint

This warm November evening, at precisely 10:13pm, world history was made when an up-and-coming, unkown actress completed the longest-ever sprint to date. The sprint lasted a whopping and insurmountable thirty-one days, ten hours and twelve minutes, at which point the actress' knees gave out and she was forced to sit down to write a blog entry. Friends and family members, who had not seen or heard from the actress in over a month, were deeply relieved to discover that the actress had not, in fact, been sold to the medical community for organ harvesting.

Well, hallelujah. :) Hello, folks.

I have to admit, given all of the texts, emails, facebook messages, and personal threats to my life following my extended absence from the blogging community, I feel a bit like I'm about to release the next installment in the Harry Potter series. While my life is certainly a bizarre one to tell the story of, please be aware ahead of time that, sadly, there are no magic wands, dueling wizards, or even Bertie Bots' Beans. That being said, even if no one reads this entry, it will at least be recorded, due in large part to my personal need to restore sanity and some sort of recollection of my life over the past month plus. For those of you who have heard these stories, or story-morsels, in bits and pieces, I hope this can complete the little world of mischief and mayhem for you.

Roughly a month ago, I began taking a seven-week weekly Improv class through AFTRA. After having discussed this with my commercial agent as a fantastic way to stay fresh and present as an actor, I had been doing some shopping around for an inexpensive class when I got an email about upcoming AFTRA events, including this free workshop series, hosted by "Carnegie Mellon graduate and former casting director Joe Reich.' Clearly, this was a class I was destined to be in, so I submitted an application, as well as a headshot and resume, and found myself registered for the class by its' early October start date. Inevitably, despite the very clear and polite email reminder to 'please be on time, per Joe's request', I was ten minutes late to our first class on October 7th, due to a classmate calling me on my way out the door, having just lost her wallet in West Hollywood and desperately needing someone with a car to help her relocate it. Joe seemed amused at this excuse, as he grinned to finally see 'the Carnegie lady' (as I was affectionately named), and joked that I couldn't have gotten away with being late back in Pittsburgh (he was right).

The little Improv class has two meetings remaining, and has thus far been a fun way to unwind and to refocus my attention on the craft of Acting, by letting go. The best moment so far has to be from this past Thursday's class, when Joe was calling us up in front of the class in pairs to do an exercise where the pair is given a scenario and must then say one line each to create the scene, with the first word of each line beginning with the last letter of the previous line. Two tiny, petite women, one an Asian-American and the other a delicate Afghan woman, were instructed to play out a blind date in this manner. They nodded their heads at the instruction, paused to take a breath, and then the Afghan woman, Laila, calmly stated, "So, I don't know if the agency told you this, but I'm actually blind." This is precisely the type of understated, thigh-slapping cleverness which seems to permeate this class each week, in one brilliant way or another, and I adore it.

On Friday, October 8th, I went on my first 'official' date with Evan, whom I can now officially site as being named Sebastien in all actuality. After not seeing each other at all during the week, Seb claiming it was important for the sake of the first date, we were both geared up for a relaxing night of acoustic music at some random venue. Having had my eyes on a pair of unaffordable Jack Johnson concert tickets for the same evening since moving to Los Angeles in May, and subsequently having moped due to a lack of funds for said tickets, Seb had assured me that we would have a fun evening out anyway. He told me that the venue was a surprise and that he didn't have a clue what music would be playing, but that he had taken his best friend to the venue before, and they had both enjoyed the evening immensely. I enjoy trying out new places, and I love live music, so I wholeheartedly agreed to the plan.

At five o'clock, Seb arrived at my little bungalow, and I opened the door to find him standing on my front porch with a small, dark brown chest. "Open it," he instructed me as he walked into the apartment, grinning his little side smile, a surefire sign of mischief afoot. Trying to hide my blushing cheeks, I unlatched the box and opened the lid. There was a sheet of white tissue paper, which read, "pull me." I lifted the delicate paper to discover an immaculate red rose. I lifted another layer to discover a box of beautiful chocolate-covered strawberries, which Sebastien had made with Swiss chocolate from back home. The next layer revealed a small manilla envelope, on which was written 'Spork', my nickname, as well as the date, 10.08.2010. I asked if I should open the envelope, and after a few moments' consideration, Seb decided that I could open the envelope later in the evening, and casually mentioned that I could bring it along. Unbelievably, a bottle of wine also emerged for the refrigerator, and a new wine opener was presented to me, to replace my sad, $3.99 wannabe from Target.

At this point, I grabbed a jacket, and we headed down to Hollywood to walk around for a while. Most people can attest to the fact that you never do the touristy things in your own city, and Los Angeles is no exception. We walked by the Kodak Theater, enjoyed looking at names on the Walk of Fame below our feet, and laughed at the giant hands and tiny feet immortalized in the concrete squares surrounding Grauman's Chinese Theater. Seb suggested we grab a snack, so we headed to our local favorite grocery store, Fresh & Easy, and bought drinks and two Tomato and Mozzarella sandwiches (tomato and mozzarella anything seems very much to be our thing; no complaints here, mind you). We took our fares and walked along Hollywood Boulevard, enjoying the sunny weather and the lighthearted, summery attitude of Hollywood early on a Friday evening. Thinking we were heading toward a grassy knoll or table somewhere for a spontaneous picnic, it suddenly dawned on me that we were actually walking with lots of other people, all of whom were heading toward the Hollywood Bowl, a famous Los Angeles concert venue. My face lit up in absolute surprise, and I turned to Seb, only able to get out, "Oh my gosh.." before he laughed at me and then told me I could open the envelope.

Sure enough, to my sheer delight and ecstatic squeals of girly joy, inside the envelope were two tickets to the Jack Johnson concert. "You really didn't know?" Sebastien asked, to which I gawked and honestly admitted my complete naivete on the matter. "Well that's a relief," Seb responded. "I spent the last week checking Facebook practically every five minutes, to make sure no one posted anything on my wall about 'having fun at Jack Johnson' or something." Seb also proudly declared that he had not lied at all, as he truly was unsure about the music that would be playing (he had only listened to a bit of Jack Johnson before), and he had enjoyed going to the John Mayer concert at the same venue with his best friend. The concert was lovely and also featured the talents of Zee Avi (whom I quite like, due to her charming simplicity) and G-Love, who was - get this - a combination of New Jersey rap with harmonica. Wine, cheese, and chocolate-covered strawberries once we got back to my apartment wrapped up an incredible first date on a very romantic note. I just want to take a second to say that I am a lucky, lucky lady. Thank you and kudos to the man upstairs. Big-time.

On Sunday, October 10th, I was able to go see my neighbor, Mike, and his band, 'Dead Day Revolution', play at the well-known Viper Room here in Los Angeles, Johnny Depp's own venue for up-and-coming artists. After baking the trio good-luck cookies during the day, it was nice to finally see the band perform that evening. I didn't know anyone else at the venue, but as I mentioned before, I love listening to new music. I also believe that one of the top things artists can do to not only extend and enhance their own body of work, but also to advocate art in a broad sense, is to get out and support fellow artists, whether by attending gallery openings to showcases, to concerts to plays, to anything. I would even love to be part of a flash-mob someday. Just putting that out there. In case someone around me was debating putting a flash mob together, I'll be there, come rain or come shine.

***

At this point in time, not because I am very tired, but because my stomach just may eat itself alive (and I have literally no food in my house), I am going to hit the pause button. Watch the video posts for the time being, as those took a bit of time away from my writing for editing purposes. I am going away for a small surprise getaway with Sebastien tomorrow. HOWEVER, the rest on the sprint will be fully explained on Monday night. Keep on truckin', yinz. Big, big, big love.