Today is the one-month-and-six-day anniversary of the most depressing birthday I’ve ever had. A week before the day I read Bossypants and it cast shadow over the festivities.

Every birthday stands a reminder that I am not where I want to be, and as one year closer to becoming too old to act. Betty White excluded, the older you get the more difficult it becomes to get work as an actress. This is a fact. As Tina Fey said in Bossypants“I have a suspicion that the definition of ‘crazy’ in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to fuck her anymore.” And crazy people aren’t hired.

Something I look forward to experiencing. Soon enough, I will be the crazy tall actress with the impronouncible last name walking down the street holding an umbrella when it is sunny, going to auditions which I will never book.

My rational mind often brings to my attention a consequence of the age-factor in show business: I’m spending my peak earning years working towards a goal in which I have little control. I read all the self-help-manifest-visualize-create-your-reality books out there, but when I tally the numbers, I’m basically volunteering countless hours of my day for the hope that it will pay off with a miraculous pay check. I never aspired to be a starving artist, and at the back of my mind I wonder if I’m settting myself up to be homeless in retirement.

Add to the umbrella countless shopping bags. And buff arms.

I can always delay unemployment with Botox or a good ol’ face lift, but that maneuver only makes it more obvious that you are too old and no one wants you.

When I’m striding down the street with tattered clothes, dirt-colored complexion and a mind full of haunting memories, at least I won’t look like the Joker. Don’t be afraid to say hi!

I am finding out that when a movie you are in goes to theaters you get invited to a lot of fancy events. During the first hour of these aforementioned gatherings the guests of honor are asked to do a series of poses on a 50-foot-long carpet of red. The photographic results of my experience on cardinal-colored tapestry have ended up on Facebook and IMDB. This is the cause of all sorts of interesting questions from friends and acquaintances.

One question or pondering expression that often comes surging from an offender’s mouth is: Are you rich now? I look behind me. Have you mistaken me for someone else? I have also gotten the query: Are you going to forget about me now? I find that an ironic question, because every time I hear my name announced and I do the obligatory suck-the-stomach-in spin onto the red carpet I ask myself: How much longer will I be asked to do this? and Do I really deserve to be here?

My inner critic is very vigilant and if any doubts pass through my mind she comes surging forth to remind my ego, in order of increasingly horrifying embarrassment, all of my shortcomings.

In the approximate 2 minutes and 47 seconds it takes to pose on the first inch of carpet to the last inch, my inner critic races to action. My, is she vicious. The fancier the event that I attend, the more malice she gathers into her being before she hisses in my ear: You’ve got to be kidding me!

Actor Patel is more than a person. More than an actor, really. He is an experience. He is the kind of guy to blast Hindi music at seven in the morning, break out in dance and song for no apparent reason and incessantly take pictures of nothing at all. I tried to video him to give all my readers a taste of what he is like, but he froze because he was speaking to a camera and not to his audience, which is really anybody and everybody who is surrounding him.

Actor Patel (who really calls himself Actor Patel — we call him “Actor” for short) played a character in the movie I was shooting in India. He was not staying at Vijay Vilas, the lovely beach resort where most of the actors were, and was instead was sucking it up as a shabby joint. At dinner the second night Actor told me how he has not been sleeping well. Beore I could stop myself an offer to take up a bunk in Grant’s, a fellow actor’s, room, flew out of my mouth. Grant almost threw a fork in my direction. That night Grant, the poor guy, was only able to get to sleep with the help of an Ambien, a blasting IPod and a pillow over his head. That was after Actor Patel made him partake in a photo shoot that included a lap top as a prop.

The next morning the cast discovered something very important about Actor: you can tell him to shut up. At breakfast he started going on a ramble that was half Gujrati, part Hindi and somewhat English (note: people who speak all of these languages fluently find him hard to follow because most of it is muttered) and Zenobia, who played his boss in the movie (character traits sometime follow you off screen) turned to him and said “Chotu [his name in the movie], be quiet!” And, miraculously he did. That was because he has a heart of gold and about the size of a football field. You can poke fun of him and he doesn’t mind — a long as he knows that you are his friend.


This is not to say that at our discovery that he is a sweet guy Actor stopped being irritating. The offers for life insurance (he sells it as a side gig — a dollar a day if you are under thirty!), puns that make no sense and a constant plee for attention all grated on our nerves. But, because he is a good person he was able to, as Grant put it, “worm his way into our hearts and infest our brains”. When filming was over Actor had to visit family somewhere else in Gujarat (however, Actor currently resides in New Jersey and is available for performance bookings all over the tri-state area which you can read about on his Facebook page) so was the first to leave. The remaining cast and crew spent a day at Vijay Vilas resort without him and the experience was not quite the same (although more peaceful). Actor told me before he left: “I am like a perfume — sometimes too strong, but when it fades out you miss it.” Yeah, we missed him.

Living in India was the first time that I had no one around telling me what to do/who to be. After college I rebelled from a conservative Republican family by moving to San Francisco. The problem with the Bay Area is that everyone agrees with each other, so there is a lack of critical thinking and serious passion. I went to India and learned something that the liberal mafia nor Howard Beach Italians would never let me admit: it is OK to manipulate the system to get what you want. Here is an old blog post from that time when I was finally was able to put on a corset and get out on the runway. Posted in post-fashion week enthusiasm.

“A friend-of-a-friend in Calcutta is a designer who got into Indian fashion week for the 1st time. Friends of theirs were going there to help out so I tagged along. I was essentially an errand boy for them and did stuff like hang up clothes and get people breakfast, but in exchange got to wear designer clothes all week, see tons of runway shows that most people just watch on F-TV(India’s 24 hour fashion network that shows mostly runway shows) and go to lots of parties with the “beautiful people” of Bombay. You’d think that I would be disgusted by the whole ensemble of starved models, sleazy agents, uptight designers and pathetic flunkeys, but by the end of my 1st runway show I was sold on the Bombay fashion industry. 1) Bombay is by far the best city in India 2) runway shows are a performance of sorts. Like drag people are performing gender. and 3) the schmoozing is so ridiculous that you cant help but see it too as a performance. Everyone is running around kissing each other’s ass and trying to move up the ladder, and you need good acting skills to pull it off. Its all just pretend for business purposes and the best actor wins!”

The last thing anyone wants to do the day after Halloween, especially one that falls on a Saturday is to get up at 9am.

By sheer insanity that is what I did last Sunday. Or should I say out of sheer curiosity. November 1st was the NYC Marathon. Now, dedicated marathon-watchers SWEAR by the outstanding nature of this event. Oh, the crowd! Oh, the runners from around the world! Oh, the amazing fantastical energy that is created by everyone coming together to accomplish such an amazingly hard feat! Hmm…it sounded like a bunch of sentimental ho-hah to me. I wanted to prove them wrong and be the Grinch who was too tired to care. Not that I don’t think running a marathon is worthy of praise, I just like to be Contrary-Mary to my friends who barrage me with goey exclamations.

Try as I did to not be touched, the experience of watching the NYC Marathon WAS incredible. Damn. Double damn. I think the 75 year old blind grandma barely able to walk who was plodding along finally broke my heart. Everyone was happy and excited and inspired. Spectators gave runners hi-fives and when their name or country was printed on their shirt, shouted out encouragement. I became the official hand-clapper of the corner of Clinton Ave and Lafayette Street. Some people were too tired to slap my hand and and others were overly zealous and grabbed my hand heartily in appreciation. Young, old, fit and disabled were all trying to ran a darn long way and we were there to cheer them on.

I asked folks about me what exactly inspires them about the marathon — click here to find see what they said:

When I’m stuck, frustrated and feeling like I want to stick my head into a toilet and flush, often the only thing that makes me feel better is perspective from someone who is more stable than me (that day). Good advice has been invaluable and I have been lucky to capture some of those words of wisdom on film (meaning my Cannon Powershot). This is the first installment of a video series which will highlight tidbits of wisdom from people who have helped me to get off my knees and back into the ring.

A few months ago I was a part one of Kopkind Colony’s Filmmaker’s Retreat in Vermont. Six days in the mountains with people I admire. The question weighing on my mind on one of those days was: How do you know when a project is worth pursuing?

The It Gets Better Project is a response to the rash of gay teenagers who have taken their lives because of incessant bullying and harassment. On this website people can post stories about how they survived high school being the geek, the loser and/or the weird one…and then turned into a glorious swan in their adult lives.

In contemplating my video there is one important point that I’m struggling to phrase fairly: that life gets WORSE for the bullies. The popular ones simply peak early. They get complacent and don’t evolve past their glory days. We geeks and weirdos know that it is possible to make an evolution because our lives changed as soon as we graduated. We moved to better cities and found friends who supported our identity. We grew and we continue to change…because we know we can. The bullies are still scratching their heads wondering why life is moving so fast.

Now if I want to motivate a teen to feel better about their current situation I can describe what the bully will look like ten and twenty years from now. However, every word that I want to use is flawed.

The bullies will be:
fat (which isn’t always bad)….
divorced (which happens to the best of us)..
broke (well, isn’t everyone?)….

Hmm…..

The main point is that the bullies will be MISERABLE.

Ah-hah!

By describing is this way teens can paint their own picture of how their current oppressor will slide into uselessness in their adult lives.

Life is GREAT that way: you don’t have to taint your karma to get revenge, they will do it to themselves!

Go geeks and weirdos!

Before I woke up and smelled ominous pallor of my impending late twenties I had a nasty little idea in my head that it is OK to be poor in New York City. In my mind it was acceptable to forsake ones educational and class privilege in the pursuit of being an artist.

How dreadful.

Nothing is worse than being in the capital of capitalism with only a piddly chunk of loose change.

When the realization came to me I was working as a bartender at a dive in the West Village. For a year prior to this moment the job had been very profitable; the time-spent-doing-a-side-job-to-money-made quotient was largely in my favor. But then my boss suddenly fell into an ever-widening marijuana haze. As he descended into oblivion he started to hate anyone who did not bend down and kiss his ass. My guess is that he didn’t have enough sense left in him to feel anything else besides the smack of wet flesh on his derrière. I wouldn’t submit to his ploys for attention. My reasoning: If I wanted to concede to morons I would give up art and work in the corporate world. So, as is typical of a non-union job when you fall out of favor with the boss, my shifts were scaled back until I was counting pennies.

One might have gotten a new job. Yes. But one is not as imaginative as I. Instead of going through the demeaning process of looking for a similarly miserable side-job I created a survival mechanism for living on crumbs: I pretended that I was an immigrant girl living in the Great Depression. My family had sent me over from Europe so that I can make money in New York. “A little scrimpin ‘n ay could surely pay for me mum’s voyage to de new land.”

How this translated itself into my life in NYC 2008 was that I started to avoid all non-necessary spending. I didn’t eat at restaurants, stopped drinking even so much as a glass of wine at bars…I was a very boring person in which to spend time. My weekly food bill amounted to the 20 dollars I spent at the farmer’s market every Sunday. I combined the food I bought there into various conconoctions to provide susstenance for the entire week. Poverty brought innovation: carrot top stir fry, radish green salads and other vegetable surprises. However, there was a limit to the number combinations of the measly five or six items that I could afford at the Farmer’s Market. Many afternoons I filled up a bowl of lettuce, sprinkled paprika over the leaves for an exotic taste, then topped the dish off with a boiled egg. Afterwards I would smile, to make light of the pathetic nature of the meal, and say “wow, I’m full.” I wasn’t even close to satisfied, but maybe if I convinced my stomach to feel that way…

There was another reason that I was eating less. An opportunity had presented itself for me to go to Europe to work the modeling market…on condition that I lose some pounds. Because of this external pressure, the reasons for eating like a pauper got mushed up in my starving mind. Was I eating less to loose weight or saving money by eating less? The answer depending on a feminist or my therapist asked me that question. I’m still not sure.

During these dire times every cent that went through my paws was budgeted to stay afloat and out of debt. I abhor credit cards and the debt enslavement system so surviving on plastic was not an option. This situation was further compounded when a good friend set her wedding date and invited me to be in the bridal party. This unfortunate turn of events meant that every extra dollar I earned had to go to fund the infamous bridal party dress and all the trimmings that come with the enterprise. The matrimony was great timing for the waistline, horrible for the morale. It was useful in that I could blame another person for my chosen situation; if it wasn’t for that darned wedding, sure, I would eat more.

At the wedding, which for me was more of a celebration of greater financial freedom (maybe afterwards I could spend 30 dollars a week in food!), I ate two plates of dessert and the rest of Denise’s leg of lamb. My stomach was in revolt against my will to loose weight. “You will not stop shoveling food into your mouth! What if we never get a chance to eat like this again?!” I was eating like a starving artist let loose in a buffet. Oh, wait, I WAS a starving artist let loose into a sumptuous feast. Finally, I had to be controlled. KeriLee pulled me away from the chocolate fountain and stabbed me with her fork to protect her plate. My stomach was happy to be full again, but punished me the next morning by banishing the foreign substances. “What is this thing called fat?”

Since that torrid period I learned the value of wealth and am now in a calculated pursuit to win my piece of the pie. During and after the destitute times I kept my situation a secret, knowing that admission would require me to acknowledge how pathetic my life was.

Recently, I mentioned the situation to my mother. I said: “Ha, ha, hehe – it was so funny when I didn’t have enough money to eat.” My mother looked ill. If my grandmother had been alive and sitting with us at the kitchen table, we would have had to rush her to Long Island Jewish for emergency cardiac surgery. My mother sighed in defeat and said: “You should’a come back home for a night and eeten my food like the rest’a dem.” Meaning my two brothers and a sister who peruse my mother’s cabinets like they’re at Shop Rite: “Ma, where’s the jumbo box of RITZ?”

I had more pride than my siblings, and also a drive to loose weight and survive on my own. I made mistakes, but I also learned how far I will go to pursue my career — never will I let myself suffer again.

The moral of this story is also a valuable lesson to aspiring starving artists: being hungry is only fun until your stomach growls.

Suffering in a NY heat wave brings me back to the agonizing afternoons I spent sitting in a polyester uniform in Catholic school. I twisted carefully in my tiny desk trying to get comfortable and avoid splinters from the cheap wood. There was no air conditioning as it wasn’t one of those fancy private school in the city. Humble little St. Helen’s School was the neighborhood elementary. My mother thought that this institution would give me a better experience than the friendly zoned public school where I would surely get my butt kicked. On sweltering days, made worse by the butcher-paper inspired blinds, us little Catholic students resorted to folding up loose leaf paper to make fans.

Sister Laura, my fourth grade teacher, outlawed this survival strategy from her classroom. Bless her frigid soul. Because although she taught me useful things like how to draw a three-dimensional farm-house, a bale of hay and a life-like tree, she did not instill a smidge of wisdom on how to survive unmentionable temperatures in scratchy fabric and matching mini-tie. Sister Laura insisted that using a hand fan only made one feel more warm, as you were expending energy. Instead, in her warped world, one is better off simply accepting the heat; complaining made your life worse.

When Sister Laura’s back turned, scrawling a lesson on the chalk board, any student with gumption would snap up their fan. I wasn’t that bold, so my fan only occasionally made its appearance, usually after someone else started the revolt. If Sister Laura’s eye caught so much as the corner of a desperately whipping fan behind her, she cruelly walked up to the quivering student, ripped the blessed creation from his or her hand and crumbled it wickedly in front of the class’ hopeless eyes.

She tried to teach us to follow orders, but all Sister Laura did for me was to cultivate a defiant love of whining and complaining, and a love/hate relationship with authority. Submit to the heat? And it’s not just the weather Sister Laura was teaching us to accept — she was instilling in us the necessity to acquiesce to a whole system of authority. The Catholic authority. The grand Patriarch himself and his system of gender equality. It started with heat and it ended with our future husbands.
I watched Sister Laura closely. One day one of the students asked: How come nuns have to give a vow of poverty and the priests can accumulate wealth? I knew that it was even worse than that. I had an inside tip. A friend who worked at the rectory (Note: they only hired girls aged sixteen and younger. Perhaps they were too young to know they were receiving poverty wages or did they just look great in their uniform?) reported that the priest’s fridge was always filled with beer. Apparently, they like to party, too, while the nuns ran soup kitchens and lived three-to-a-room. She smiled in response and said something so lame that I blocked it out of my memory.

In my adult life I make a fan every time the thermometer goes over 85, just to make it clear to the world that I will never be a submissive shrew like Sister Laura.

Remember when it was December and NYC was coldcoldcold? I looked at my summer clothes and said, “Ha! When the hell it is ever warm enough to wear THAT?” It happens every year. My weather memory doesn’t extend past more than two weeks. Without fail I’m astonished by snow and perplexed by the heat.

The most upsetting thing about modern air conditioning is that you relish in the chill but then inevitably have to go back outside. I don’t live in an apartment with air conditioning. In its place, a Vornado fan. The little gem creates a wind effect which causes every piece of paper in my apartment to go a floatin’. The tunnel of air is refreshing and the view in my window unblocked. On those days I’m smug.

Using an electric fan is sufficient when the weather is between 75 and 90 degrees. When it is passes 91 degrees discomfort creeps into my limbs. I don’t want to install global warming inducing air conditioning. Maybe Sister Laura’s theories unwittingly seeped into my resistant brain, causing me to reject cool-making technology. However, I refuse to submit to lower myself to nun-style martyrdom. Instead, I stick it in the face of my old teacher to find more complex ways than a paper fan to survive.

Here is how I run (sprint) from the heat:1- Standing or walking next to any store or train exit to get wafts of cold air. (Essential survival strategy at the West 4th F/V and 59th Street A/C station.)

2- Sense memory exercises from acting class. “I’m in Antarctica, the snow is falling. Lo, there is a Polar Bear. Look! I’m shivering so bad that I can barely feel my hands.”

3- Standing in an air-conditioned store until I can gather the courage to go home where the fan will make things cooler only by blowing away the beads of sweat going down my back.

4- Fro-yo: the 4th meal of the day.

5- Large sun hat. I pretend that I’m Great Garbo, but feel free to imitate your favorite recluse celebrity.

6- Planing my day based on where the good AC is.

7- Arranging any and all office visits and work hours to the middle of the day. Corporate hell-holes always blast the AC (otherwise, the sad-sack employees would quit.)

8- Agreeing to do errands and favors that bring me to a well air-conditioned place.

9- Ice cubes, ice cubes, ice cubes.