Might As Well Face It (I'm Addicted to Actresses)

The correct term, I'm told by female thespians, is actor, in a non-discriminatory way. As if this industry isn't dominated by strange whore-mongering men. Like most I spose. But I was raised on actresses so actresses I'll call em. They are a completely different species to the male actor (be he your garden variety extrovert or weird, quiet unworking type) because the entertainment world has only a couple of replaceable roles for chicks who 'wanna get into acting.' Blonde or Evil Stepmother. So actresses have to be savvy and wily and cool and entertaining and occasionally, let's not beat around the bush, drop dead gorgeous. Throw in the normal artistic neurosis, some comic potential, and the yoga, and the steely way they learn to sit in waiting rooms full of blondes mauling each other's bodies with their eyes. Us actors can look like Danny Devito and still have a shot at the odd audition. We prefer our actresses, of course, to age Cate on Nic like. I like the Cate kind personally.

I like all that stuff. Heaps.

And of course I will spare you the personal pain and sweaty palms, especially as any fool could tell you that when professional liars start exchanging body fluids they are destined for the odd deception. But actresses and actors may be the only type that can possibly understand each other. The strange show-off sold as expression. The sight-gags passed off as satire. Stupid hours for no money. All that shit. And I've always been a sucker for good acting. Like I enjoy watching it. Just when you've stopped obsessing over the incredible girl you saw in that movie last year she's standing next to you at the Budgie Jar asking about your ex. And try staying away from your ex after having just watched her rip Lady Macbeth to shreds under lights in a corset. It's near impossible. Us professional liars should probably shut up and fall quietly (and realistically) on our own safety-tipped swords.

Is lying sexy? Or is sex one of many lies. Maybe that just sounds good.

The thing in which we'll catch the king.

I wrote a musical with some help from friends, some of whom know about music, which helped. Christmas farce slash musical revue thing. It opened while I was in the Magic Kingdom, and so I was itching to see it on my return to the Fatal Shore. The street press have labeled it post-post-post modern and the official hacks liked the sight-gags. It's pretty fuckin funny, in the way one can seriously amuse oneself, and the cast is spectacular. But the actors appear at the bar after the show looking like actual Colonial wrecks, emaciated, exhausted remnants of the Gulag that is co-op theatre. Most of these actors are slumming it in order to benefit a tops production, none of them are strangers to the fringe, and all of them are slumming it in the sense that the current government seems intent on running the Arts back into the prostitution racket. It's sad to see actors so poor and starving, not brooch to the eyeball sad, you'll find it rather common if you look around, but pretty sad after having been gloriously entertained all night by them, knowing the whole two month commitment won't even cover their rent. Then again it didn't pay mine either. Better than a kick in the head I suppose.

Massive One at the Marmont. (I wish they all could be Californian hurls)

May I chronicle a forty eight hour bender? Sweet. So it started a couple of nights ago at the Marmont, yeah where Fatty Arbuckle was framed, where the Deppster threw his TV off the balcony, all that. Oh before that, see my brain is fricken pankakes and scrambled eggs - I'll get to them - we went to the Standard, nice, you'd like it. The drummer from Grand Final suggested martinis, I chose the kind where they replace the squirt of juice with congac - if I recall correctly it was called a Hypnotic. We watched a girl just hanging out in a glass box, was dissapointed to find that they can't see you from in there, kind of spoiled the fun. Compared skin regimes with my actor/drummer tourguide. Two sessions of hypnosis later I'm contemplating jumping in the pool - something I haven't done in years - fully clothed. Yeah the Marmont. Was like Surry Hills on a tops night - a bit sticky, especially the prices, but totes bacchanalian parade with heavy lashings of vodka. Around this point I lost a day - but not before discovering The International House of Pankakes - open 24 hours - where I celebrated the American dream of having everything on your plate at once, at whatever hour, with blueberry fricken sauce on it. Found myself at this ace designer's party, once again had pangs of longing for the Hills, trying to focus on a girl called Gina, from the South, who was wearing a white hard-hat and little else. Had the stereotypical fun that can be had with cats who don't know we speak English in Australia. The gin martinis were ridiculously free, as were the vats of vodka and cranberry and buckets of beer one of which I know I knocked into a pool at some point. Bands kept appearing and playing, in hardhats, then vanishing. And hundreds of rooms with no furniture - things started spinning a little B. Easton Ellis. At some point it dawned on me that there were quite a few tarts in hardhats, they were a motif if you will, there were rows of them in fact, on the wall, screaming wear me. The drummer from Grand Final and I didn't need much convincing. Well, weren't we a hit. After filling our pockets with free beer in an extremely Australian way we jumped in that cute guy from Thunderstruck's sixty dollar car and abandoned it somewhere near a place called Velvet something. Jumped onto the tequila with a top chap from Who's Line Is It Anyway? He's been making war veterans, most of them limbless and nineteen, laugh themselves better in their military hospital beds. Vince Vaughn checked me out and couldn't think of a thing to say. The ladies here, very forward. We talked, oh we talked, of bands called Metal Skool and the horrible Pantera thing, and like everyone has a fricken tatoo. The Who's Line guy, Jeff was his name, showed us how to drink a creation designed to hurt on the way down, like really hurt, for exactly five seconds, then an apparent explosion of euphoria and warmth. He was dead on. That young actor from the Tracker had a Spanish friend who was just grabbing chicks and making them listen to him, and they loved it. A bartender named Alex was very generous - then the predictable dejavu of my return to the House of Pankakes. Here the wheels fell squarely off shit. I only recently woke on the kitchen floor of some new friends here in Hollywood, their cat judging me, with a plane to catch, ten bucks, and too much shopping to pack. And of course the blistering thirst for a beer at the Budgie Jar, Oxford Street, Sydney.

Am I aloud?

Am I allowed to like playing that Mariah Carey 'All I Want for Christmas' number (a song which I'm sure has put more moolah in her love box than any of her other 'releases') up really loud whenever December rolls around? Am I allowed to like The Little Drummer Boy, especially because it's a weird military intrusion on the three wise men theme, especially because it's a bit creepy, all that rump-a-pum-pumming, and especially creepy when Bing and Bowie sing it in that tripped out seventies video clip (Bing about to bust his last breath, Bowie improvising in a range the angel Gabriel never blessed him with)? Am I allowed to really dig Boney M singing Feliz Navidad - I Wanna Wish You A Merry Christmas? And that Paul Kelly one about the dude in jail wishing he was making gravy? And the weird Beatles Christmas fanclub welcomes, and all the shouldn't-have-gone-there Xmas albums that our heroes have dabbled with? Hell yes. Even the cream of the hall of fame know that in December you do whatever damn well makes you feel good.

All we must remember is that what feels good very rarely looks good.

There's more to this.

The guides on how to blog that come with this site may be beginner's standard for some, the tips offered might be helpful for those who already speak in binary, it no doubt makes life easier for cats who didn't require help from their father in setting up their basic hotmail actount. For the true Luddite however, creating this thing, this tiny unadorned portal on which I can diarize has taken two fricken days. Two of em. As to how I get other people to know I'm here, how to make it all pretty, how I maintain the space etc, I just don't care. I have to sleep.

Working the angles.

The visiting actor raises an eyebrow, even chortles of disbilief, here in the city of angles. If you're just visiting you can't be a genuine threat and therefore you can be ignored or indulged, but to be leaving los angeles, only here for a freaky neon spell, that confuses the working or slightly working LA based actor. Why would you be leaving? It's all here, and it so is, sun, air, cheap food, actual acting work. But there's a look on some of their mugs when you you tell em you're only staying a week, something trembles behind their eyes sometimes that says: Please, take me with you.