A Year in Los Angeles
I've been in Los Angeles for one year. What have I learned?
Los Angeles is a lonely town with lonely people and lonely bars.
You pull up to your apartment with hopeful dreams and inspiring thoughts. The place
looks great (in your eyes), the view is breathtaking (of the highway) and the people
are nice.
The first month, you pound the pavement for jobs but no one wants to hire you. It's not
even good jobs. We're talking minimum wage jobs that any idiot can do. At the end of the
month, you settle for the only job you can get. Working at the same restaurant chain
that got you through college.
The second month, you pound the pavement looking for internships. You get lucky and get
one but it doesn't pay. They won't even flip for gas or lunch. So a couple of days a week,
you haul your ass out of bed, drive for an hour, answer phones, make copies and run errands
around town in YOUR car with YOUR gas.
The third month the bills are piling up. The living expenses are more than you planned
and you can make up the difference in that serving job that's killing your soul. So you
suck up your pride, head out to New Hampshire for three months, and show them hicks how
to run a restaurant.
Month four, five and six are a blur. All I can say is New Hampshire is very cold and the
people are crazy. I'm not being specific...they are ALL crazy.
The seventh month, you're back in town with a renewed spirit, really to take the town
again. But wait, those minimum wage jobs are still not hiring, so you go back to that
restaurant chain with your head up your ass.
The good news is that internship helped after all. The assistant takes you on as a client
and gets you a couple of auditions. You get callbacks on every one and you go out some
more.
You go to your first theatre audition with a 103.5 Fever. You get the part but all of your
lines are in Japanese. Plus it doesn't pay and your weekends are tied up for the summer.
There's good and bad in everything---believe me---you just have to look carefully.
The seventh, eight and ninth month flies back. Summer does that to you.
The tenth month, you move to another production office with the assistant and she takes you
along as a client. The new production house didn't have an intern, so you cause a controversy
and all hell breaks loose. I'm being dramatic here, it wasn't that bad. I'm stuck doing
eight hours of copying, copying and some more copying. Sometimes I get to run out and buy
supplies for them, like sodas and juices.
Eleventh month---the bills are piling up again. That reserve of cash you built up from New
Hampshire is gone. You have to cut your expenses but there's nothing to cut. You run on
empty as it is.
Twelfth month rolls around and the landlord decides to kick you out of that lovely apartment
with that wonderful highway view. She wants to rent the whole house to someone but you kiss
ass. No you REALLY kiss ass and she lets you stay on for another six months.
The holiday is upon us, this year is ending and another year beckons. So much hope and
dreams and aspirations.
What will the New Year bring? Will it be like the last? We'll see. Join me every two weeks
here at the Corner and we'll cry together, laugh together, and grow old together.
Written by Charlie Cheng
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