Uptight and White

I went to Not Your Berry's Farm callback for their show: Uptight and White. I had wanted to audition for this show for over a year. It's based on their hit movie, "The Singing Dudes" about two guys who love black music and form a band. I was doing my Hollywood Death Cab tour one day last week, when I heard they were having the auditions that day. So I called the director, and he let me come to the callbacks. I told a lot of my friends I had a "call-back." Ugh, what a lammo I am.

The call-backs were held in an industrial part of Santa Ana, at one of Not Your Berry's Farm warehouses. Railroad tracks right in front of our building. Several other Hollywood Death Cab guides showed up at the call-backs, and one was kind enuff to try and teach me the dance step we would have to do while we waited in the parking lot. I am a funny dancer, but coreography is INSANELY hard for me to learn quickly. So, I was freaking about that. Also freaking about the talent level I would be facing. I was sure everyone was American Idol final quality. My head was pounding and I was in red-level-performance-anxiety-mode. Obviously, nervous energy can be converted positivley, I've done it many times, but this one felt like the bull was riding me. Later in the week, I asked my me-no-good-english doctor if I could get "beta blockers" for my situational anxiety. I don't think she had any idea what the word "situational" meant. She kept trying to prescribe me Xanax. I don't want to be medicated 24/7, I just want a pill I can drop when my heart juices up like this. I've got to find a doctor who deals with actors, I can't believe in this pill-plethora world there's not something for situational performance anxiety.

The guy who held the auditions was extremely cool. He took his time teaching us the dance steps, he was encouraging at every level. He was looking for "singers" who he could teach to move. The question is, would he think he could teach me to move, after seeing me lumber about on this step I was just learning? The question was never answered. I hid. I hid in the corner, and they called up us to dance, 3 at a time. He called peeps from their headshots he had collected from the first audition. Thus, he didn't have my headshot. Thus, he never called me, and I never volunteered. I told myself that when I realized I wasn't going to be called, I didn't want to go up and dance by myself. But most of it was -- I didn't want to draw attention to myself. I wanted to hide. My anxiety was surging.

Finally, we got to sing. Again, I sorta hid out in the corner. I honestly think if he hadn't called me, I would not have gone up. He did call me, and I thought I sang OK. I know I can sing much better, but at least I didn't tank. My tourguide pal thought I did a good job singing, and I was pushing him to be honest, so I hope he was. Almost all of the singers sang in stupid broadway showtune style. We're ruining our youth, teaching them all the same boring style. Mine had much more R&B, Blues and Rock in it, but I was so nervous, I don't think I controlled it as much as I could have. I thought I saw the director and his assistant laff and talk amongst themselves when I started singing, but god knows what that was for. It was frustrating. I think I could have booked that job, but I sold myself out, talked myself outta it. I was so sure I would be overwhelmed by the hollywood talent pool before it even started, and the truth was, I had a shot. Next time, I'll probably go in all confident, and there will be a room full of amazing people who will shame me back into humility.

Later the Hollywood Death Cab Tourguides all got together for a party, and I kept telling people I had just dropped Cialis (the LOVE drug), and I had to get home before it wore off. Oh boy. I really had, and I felt like a college kid dropping acid for the first time, and waiting for his mirror to melt his face ("whatever you do: don't look in the mirror!"). It was also my lover's birthday, so we got lotsa free drinks, which freed my tongue. Guides are blabby, just like me, so I have to pay attention at these things and not reveal state secrets.

I did Tours all weekend, and pushed the envelope by saying I was "inbred" on one tour. Our tour is so vanilla and 1950s, that we have to watch it. Even though we are supposedly this edgy tour about all the stars in Hollywood who have died, there's a fear of offending anyone. And then, I was a stupid braggert, told a couple of people my smart remark, who will most assuredly tell a couple more, and I'll be in front of our boss getting my ass chewed out very soon. I do think that given the entertainment standard for our times, given what passes for PG-13, what's on the TV in the middle of the afternoon, the very adult jokes you see dropped into kid's movies -- I'm in lockstep. Any of my jokes that do have spice, are nothing kids would understand. Buuuuuut, it's not my Cab, now is it???

I had the great experience of having a couple of peeps I respect, older guides, and one of them a Hollywood Death Cab dispatcher (that's a step up in the management chain) take my tour. I had them laffing the whole way. They loved it, and got what I was trying to do: be funny, but not at the expense of relaying the information I think is interesting. It made me feel good, these are people who've done a million tours, so I was high as a kite afterwards. And, when I get my stinky review, from my stinky nemisis boss Dirk, I will at least be able to point to these older guides as someone who took my tour and thought it was fantastic.

Finally, I heard a bunch of guides in the breakroom talking about how they were going to start a blog. I'll bet no one in that room believed that old-guy-Josh has a blog. I just sat silently listening and recording the times around me, with the slightest of smirks