More to Life

My brush with Hollywood in Minnesota has officially come to an end. A Prairie Home Companion is about to wrap shooting any day now, and my "role" in the movie is over. I got called back four times, and I got on set three times. After my disastrously disappointing first day, I had my doubts about returning. But with nothing better to do this summer and no good excuses, I couldn't turn down the offers for a second, third, and even a fourth try, which compensated me with plenty of excitement.

My second time back (first time on set) ushered in the excitement. That day was huge--they called in 650 extras, so we all packed the waiting room like a bunch of sardines. I happened to meet a lady who knew someone on the crew, who in turn set us up with nice numbers (you get called on set by number). Instead of simply filling another seat in the audience, we got a special role as "latecomers." As the show began and the curtains rolled up, an usher showed us to our seats. We felt so special every time they shouted, "action!" and "cut!" We were actually doing something in the scene! We did some 4 or 5 takes of that, and I would have gladly gone for 20 more. We felt like little movie stars.

My second time on set, yesterday, was even more exciting. Although I didn't get a special role, the set was full of celebrities. Sitting in our comfy audience seats, we got to see Kevin Kline, Tommy Lee Jones, Virginia Madsen, Woddy Harrelson and John C. Reilly work their movie-making magic. Harrelson and Reilly were hilarious! They joked with the audience and thanked us for volunteering our time. They even entertained us with a little spontaneous singing. Woody did a great Elvis "Heartbreak Hotel," and Reilly broke out some "Blue Bayou."

Tonight was by far the most exciting, though. We got called to stay until 4 a.m. I hesitated staying up so late, but I couldn't resist another chance at the movies. They even enticed me by saying that it'd be a fun outdoor scene with Tommy Lee Jones walking through the crowd. Neither of what they told me was true. We wrapped around 12:30 a.m. and there was no Tommy Lee Jones, but there was still wicked fun. Tonight they shot the scene where the audience enters the theatre. They were looking for "couples," so a woman I was talking to and myself volunteered. Luck had it that we got pulled to the front of the line. We were asked the play the role of a couple that's running late to meet friends we haven't seen for years. We had to run up to the entrance of the theatre and act all frazzled. Oh, it was a hilariously great time, so hilarous we actually felt like actors. I might not have had this much fun in years.

Despite my few mini-roles, I know there's still a great chance my scenes won't even make the final cut. It's OK though. I met some really light-hearted, friendly people. I saw some celebrities, and soaked in all the behind-the-scenes adrenaline of mega-cameras and a frazzled crew. I experience the magic of movie-making and made some great memories in the process. They can cut me out of the movie, but they can't take that away from me.

If you ever had the queasy sensation that some artists receive more radio airplay than others and wondered if there was some corporate connection between the big-record-label artists and what you hear on the radio, well, then you were probably on to something. Sony BMG, which promotes artists signed to Arista, Columbia, and Jive among other labels, has just been fined $10 million for bribing radio stations to increase their artists' airplay. Investigations have now been launched into other major record labels for similar illegal practices.

It's a shame that in a democratic/capitalistic society where people compete and ideally the best, by virtue of their talent and mass-appeal, rise to the top that radio stations and record labels have been conspiring for years to control what we hear for their personal benefit. The music business is tough enough to break into, these practices only further limited what we heard and probably prevented many rising artists from a fair chance at success. No wonder we hear so few artists on small, independent labels. We can only hope that these investigations and fines will level the musical playing field, and that into the future we will benefit from a broader diversity of sounds and artists on the airwaves where the best and most talented (as opposed to those signed to the biggest and "best" record labels) succeed.

Read more about it: "Sony Agrees to $10M 'Payola' Settlement" Yahoo News/AP.

I'm finally starting to enjoy the fruits of all my time spent in the garden this summer, and it's not too disappointing. After a streak of too-hot-too-handle days, our cherry tomato plant kicked into rippening overdrive, so now every few days we get a nice bowl-sized harvest. They're sweet and delicioius and soooo fresh. Mmm mmm mmm!

Hot peppers are coming along well; my dad already devoured a few. The eggplants have been flowering like mad, big beautiful white-purple flowers, so I'm eagerly awaiting a few of those to grow. The raddish harvest, on the other hand, wasn't too great. They didn't grow those round red raddish roots. Oh well, at least we got to see their small pink-white flowers. Everything else seems to be right on track, though, and I'm looking forward to what's yet to come.

My blogger buddy, Sarah, recently tagged me in an "If I Were..." post. So here are things I would do if I could be...

A librarian. I would spruce up the library a little bit. I guess this all depends on what kind of library we're talking about. There are some pretty fancy libraries, especially on college campuses, but that tends not to be true in high schools and local city-owned libraries across the country. So I'd do some fundraising (because you know there'd be no budget to begin with).

Once money's not a problem I'd liven up the place a bit. The old dusty rug with the deathly shades of gray-brown would have to go fast. In comes a nice new fluffy carpet with some color and life and a little bit of spunk. The second thing to go has to be all those nasty tables and chairs. You all know those old wooden chairs that wobble like they're going to drop you at worst, or at best are just stiff and uncomfortable. And how about those tables that look like they came straight out of the 1940s because, oh wait, they probably did and they have how many decades of engravings on them to prove it? Out with the tables and chairs. They've got to go. In there place will be some comfy armchairs and nice new tables and chairs.

I wouldn't be all too opposed to some colors on the walls. Maybe some bright orange, or sunshine yellow mixed with blue--Ikea style? I've always thought people in libraries look way too sleepy, maybe some warm colors would make the place seem more inviting?

Anyway, enough pretending to live out a non-existent dream of interior design as a librarian. Once I read this article about a person who took a job as a librarian and used all the spare time to type up a book. I think that would be a cool thing to do as a librarian.

A gardener. You had to know I'd pick this one with all my talk about gardening this summer. If I were a gardener, I'd make sure my sunflowers grow. I'd also make a bigger patch for my vegetable garden and grow more vegetables. I'd definitely figure out a way to make those darn garlics and radishes grow. I'd also plant way more herbs and spices. I would buy much less supermarket produce and cook so much more with spices and vegetables from my garden. Mmmmmmmmmm freshness!

A psychologist. Funny, I was just thinking about this last night. How often have you heard people whispering that underneath their professional and detached personas, most psychologists lead screwed-up lives themselves? Whether or not it's true, I'd try to keep the trade a little more real (and I believe that certain psychologists try to put this to practice).

I wouldn't try to perpetuate and profit from an ideology that any problem is abnormal and can be fixed with enough therapy, nor would I try to perpetuate and profit from the notion that we can find ultimate happiness and some sort of ideal life with the overpaid frequent guiding of a psychologist. I would try to make people see what's great about themselves, boost self-esteems but not inflate them. I'd encourage generosity and tolerance but not naivete.

A professor. I wouldn't be so darn stuck up. Much to my dismay I've lost a lot of my appreciation for professors over the past couple years. The people who I used to idealize as the gatekeepers to the wisdom that can solve the world's problems now seem to me much more like a grumpy, stressed out bunch who A. maintain an elite monopoly on knowledge and B. squander the tremendous opportunity to instill hope and inspiration in young minds.

OK, obviously not all professors are that bad. I've met a precious few who have defied that description and they are the ones I would emulate if I were a professor. I'd make a point to meet with each of my students at least twice a semester EVEN if I had a big lecture class of 300 kids. I wouldn't pretend I know everything about my field, and I wouldn't be pretentious just because I knew a little more than my students. I'd also try to find a different approach towards grading, or at least not base it so much on cookie-cutter tests and essays.

A world famous blogger. I'd mobilize an armada of feisty bloggers to tackle the world's problems one by one. Sure, we might not even get to 1% of them, but at least we'd try. If I were a world famous blogger, I'd blog about world poverty, human health issues, the environment, and other challenges menacing the globe and humanity in between posts about my stressed out life and my kick ass summers. I would raise money for important causes and bring attention to problematic issues. Together with my readers, we'd unleash the power of the internet to educate and to empower and use our collective strength to transform this world for the better. So what do y'all say, shall we start? :-)

Despite my last visit entailing a shot and painful drilling, I love going to the dentist. I've been going to the same clinic since I was three years old and the dentist and his assistants have watched me grow up in six month snapshots. Every time I go for a cleanup they get me talking about the biggest things that have happened in my life in the past six months.

I remember once being all excited about starting high school. Then it was winning the French national contest and getting an all expenses paid trip to France for a week. Then I started taking classes at the University of Minnesota. A check-up to two later I was talking about getting involved in the Sierra Club and they had seen me on TV or heard me on the radio because of it. Then the whole college search frenzy, and by the next visit I knew I was heading out east to mingle with the "ivy elite", but I already started to show signs of burnout. Then excitement peaked again with my Hilary Duff/Teen People photoshoot and the stakes got high and almost everyone but me was planning for my upcoming stardom which never really got to shine.

The folks at my local family dental clinic got used to expecting a chaotic fast-paced life out of me, but more importantly somewhere along my journey through the high school corridors and the college quads they gained a lot of respect and admiration for me. But I didn't really notice that most important bit until today.

I walked in and took a seat in the waiting area, where I started flipping through some magazines they had lying around. Less than a minute had gone by, but the secretary couldn't contain herself, "So have you been in any other magazines?" she blurted shyly. I smiled and told her I hadn't, but within seconds she had me talking about flying to Hollywood and the photoshoot and then flying to NYC for the release of the magazine. All the while she was smiling and was filled with wide-eyed excitement because somehow my going to that clinic for years linked her to all the madness.

Later when I saw the dentist and his assistant, their first question was "how is your summer, are you busy?" They probably thought that was a rhetorical question because when I confidently said "no," they seemed to stop still and do a double take. In between poking my teeth I told them about my job search and how nothing worked out and that was probably the best thing that could have happened to me because I really needed this time to rest up. Plans for the future were up in the air. Grad school? Probably, but not right away. I'm taking my time.

The dentist took his sharp tool out of my mouth and pushed his chair away announcing, "you're fine..."

Did anyone see the debut of the new Fox show So You Think You Can Dance? I'll admit, I sat through the whole two hour debut watching hopefuls twirl their way to Hollywood and British judges praising and throwing punches. It got me thinking a bit about who goes where and why.

What struck me so much, along with my recent experience in the movies (FYI I went back another day and it was a complete 180!), is how fickle success can be. Certain people with power can make or break an opportunity for you, and whether those so called judges or power-brokers worked hard to be where they are or whether the jobs somehow fell in their lap is sometimes debatable.

You see people with the most amazing talent get rejected and some people get selected because they're "unique" or fit whatever mold the show is looking to cast. Then there are clashes about how things are and how things should be. In one case tonight, a guy who was trained in ballet and whose talent was not questionable got bashed by a judge for not dancing "masculine enough." The dancer fought back, questioning who is to judge what is "masculine" and what isn't. Is it fair to prescribe who should dance how?

What I'm sensing is that in the business where dreams come true perhaps connections and luck along with being who others want you to be plays a bigger role than we'd like to admit.

In early June when I visited my aunt who lives in a small mountaintop village, she gave me a tour of her garden. Fig trees, lemon trees, willows and a variety of other trees fenced off her yard. We walked by plots of lettuce, carrots, and cabbage next to her driveway. Near the back entrance of the house grew herbs and strawberry bushes, but what caught my eyes were the sunflowers. Two grew near the sidewalk, and I remember my eyes following their thin long stems from the ground up to a height of five or six feet. Their big leaves blew softly with the breeze, but their strong stems stood unshaken. Then at their peak they crowned themselves with a big round yellow flower.

When I got back home I didn't waste much time before buying sunflower seeds. I wanted to grow tall sunflowers of my own before the first frost. I planted three along the walkway up to our house so that we could gasp at them everytime we entered the house in a month or two.

From the day I planted them I would go outside to check on them every day. My visits grew a little more frequent about four days later when they sprouted. I literally watched those plants grow. I counted their leaves almost daily and watered them meticulously. But my enthusiasm couldn't ensure their survival.

About two weeks later I went out one morning to find one sunflower completely gone. At close inspection I noticed that it had been devoured down to its base. A mere few millimeters of the chopped off stem peaked out of the ground.

With two other baby sunflower plants to tend to I wasn't too devastated. I focused my energy on the other two. They grew even taller in the next few weeks, until suddenly the taller of the two plants met a similar fate as the other dead sunflower. Actually, a little more of the stem remained intact and the herbivore even left one leaf. Unfortunately, the damage was too great and days later that plant shriveled and died, too.

With only sunflower left, I decided to take more care. I collected dozens of twigs and piled them up around the last sunflower. They protected it well for a few weeks, long enough I thought I found the trick. Unfortunately when I went outside today I found the last sunflower completely shriveled up. I thought maybe these hot 90+ summer temperatures were just a little too much. I rushed to the water hose and started watering in a mad frenzy. A few minutes into the watering I noticed that the upper part of the plant had been chopped off completely from the base of the stem. The poor dry leaves weren't just lacking water, they'd been completely cut off life support.

We have voracious mice living our bushes and they've been eating our marigolds and terrorizing just about any other living plant in our front yard. Pest control's going to be paying us a visit soon. In the meantime, I'm 3/3 with these sunflowers :-\ ... Better luck next time?

"Action" is a word that I didn't hear at all in the past two days. My attempt to be a movie extra was a complete flop.

The flopping probably started on Tuesday night when my sister took the car out for a joy ride. She told my mom that there was half a tank left when she came back, but somehow when I hopped in the car the next morning there was less than a quarter of a tank left. It made me a bit nervous when I got stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the highway for 15 minutes.

Given the unexpected delay on what should be a fast highway, time became a problem, too. I sort of lost my way, and once I got there people were already lining up to get on the bus. I parked in a frenzy and grabbed my backpack, Ipod, clothes. I yanked the keys out of the ignition and stumbled to carry all my stuff, lock the car, and run to the bus.

I was greeted at the line by a friendly lady who claimed to be the one who gave me the call-back. She checked me in and then I waited. The bus filled up and I had to wait a good 20 minutes until it dropped off the first round of people and got back to pick me up with all the other last-minute comers. That was my first introduction to "hurry up and wait."

The bus dropped us off right next to the theatre where the film was shooting, but to our surprise the staffers ushered us to a nearby building instead of directly to the set. They rented an entire floor with tables, chairs and a restroom and that's where we were to sit and wait.

About an hour later they called out numbers, "1 through 90!" The first lucky few people got to head to the set. Then they called another batch of numbers in which I was included. Excited, I lined up, quickly got approved by wardrobe and headed out to the set. When we got to the bottom of our waiting building, some of the staffers told us to hold on. Then they counted off some people and pulled us aside, "we need some people who can jump over chairs," they mumbled to us. That's when I got all excited, like dang I'm going to be jumping over chairs for a real movie? Sounds like some real action!

So we stood outside in the humid 90 degree weather waiting to be called on set. Five minutes later the staffers shouted to us to return back to the waiting room. "It'll be a while," they claimed.

OK, "a while," I was thinking it couldn't be worse than an hour or two. So we all went back to the massive waiting room and waited. Noon, 12:10pm, 12:30pm, 1pm, 2pm time ticked by, every second painfully slow. Luckily I got to chat with some nice people around me, but it's hard to hold up a conversation for hours upon hours. We were antsy, tired, and bored. We had nothing to cling onto except that "it'll be a while." Eventually, one girl I was talking to got hungry so I offered to go look for some food with her.

When we headed towards to the stairs we met two staffers sitting beside tables. They told us we couldn't leave for "security reasons." Well, we could leave, but they ensured us that if we left we would not be allowed to return. Resigned, we returned to our chairs to wait some more.

2:45pm. They announced a lunch break, we were free to roam around downtown for an hour, but had to be back by 3:45pm promptly. Eager to stretch our legs and leave what was starting to feel like a jail, I left with some of the people I was chatting with.

Break reinvigorated us with hope. We thought there was a reason for having the break now, and a reason to be back by 3:45pm. We got back hoping to be called up as extras soon enough. 3:45pm we were hopeful. 4:00pm waiting in anticipation; 4:45pm getting antsy; 5:45pm starting to wonder...

At 6:15pm a blonde staffer climbed on a table and shouted, "I have good news and bad news." After hours of waiting with no clue we drank her words like nomads lost in a desert. "The good news is that there's no more waiting!" Ahhh!!! Finally a chance to go on set! "The bad news is that they wrapped for the day." Oh. OK.

After over 7 hours of hanging around and waiting I was just ecstatic to leave. I've heard that being a movie extra entails a lot of "sitting around and waiting," but dang! That's such a euphemism!!! I thought I'd be waiting around an hour or two or three at most in between takes. I also thought I would do my waiting on set where there'd still be a little going on, where I could still soak up the excitement of the cameras and the movie-making process. Unfortunately reality once again disappointed.

I called later that night to confirm about the shoot today. (Un?)Fortunately they told me extras for today were cancelled. Oh well, after that intensely odd experience I definitely appreciated having the day off. I slept in till 10:30am and relished not having to check-in my freedoms at the door.

I might have said I'm young 'n unemployed, but I still have a couple tricks left up my sleeve. A couple weeks ago, half out of desperation and half because I thought it would be exciting, I registered to be an "extra" for a feature film that's shooting this summer in Minnesota. It's not that often that a big Hollywood production comes to Minnesota of all places, and it's not that often that I have spare time, but somehow it all converged so conveniently this summer.

I drove out to downtown a few weeks ago, my heart beating a little heavier than usual the whole way there. Palms sweating, I walked up to the building, went up to the office and waited a bit. A nice, soft-spoken lady quickly greeted me and had me fill out a form with some information about myself. She went over some brief background to being an extra and handed me a sheet with more information. In turn, I gave her a photo of me, as requested. That was it, I was registered to be a movie extra! It was way more painless than I thought.

I wasn't banking on it all too much, though. Local newspapers reported that over a thousand signed up as extras. Add on to that my complete cluelessness about how this industry works, I didn't expect much. They also didn't confirm me for any dates, basically I had to sit and wait for a phone call. And I waited... for a couples weeks, until this morning when I was awoken by a call to my cell phone.

So, yes! Tomorrow and Thursday I'll be spending 12 hours each day on the set of A Prairie Home Companion. I don't have any lines and I might be hurrying up and waiting a lot, but hey. With people like Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, and Lindsay Lohan on cast I'll definitely be seeing stars for a couple days. And even though we're not allowed to take pictures or interact with them, I'll still be seeing stars! LOL.

Although I might be thanking God for forcing me into unemployment this summer, this whole job-searching process I undertook for the first time taught me a lot. With no big regrets about the situation I'm in now, I'm digging a bit deeper into how I landed an amazing jobless summer.

I learned that employers today are flaky as hell.

Some of the big corporate summer internships I went for only had online applications. How's that for shady? The worst was one company that had me submit my resume and cover letter through online forms. Runner-up worst were two other companies that had me e-mail them all that stuff. Don't get me wrong, this online thing could be really convenient, but it takes two to tango. They had me dancing on hot stones while they stood still. In all three cases these companies used their online applications as a substitute to any other communication. No contact name, no phone number, no personal e-mail. If I did some digging I could possibly find a mega-HR department that has no clue what's going on anyway. It was flaky because in two out of three cases I didn't even get confirmations for my applications. The problem was there was no one I could call or e-mail to follow up.

In another case I applied for a summer teaching position. That actually went really well... for a while. I inquired, they replied. I applied, they offered me an interview. I was feeling good about that one until I replied with times and days I would be available to interview, per their request. Suddenly, the hiring woman who had been so great at responding to me didn't write back. I thought that was unusual, so after two days of waiting I sent another e-mail. No reply, again. Geez, thanks for the polite rejection?!

Then there are the big retail stores (this is when I was getting desperate). I wandered into one with a friend with no intention of job hunting. I couldn't resist, though, once I spotted a huge NOW HIRING sign posted inside the store. I got a bit excited, and my friend urged me to see what's up. I approached one of the assistants, "I saw you have a now hiring sign up, and I wanted to know if I could apply for a job."

The lady did something really funky with her eyes, gave me a squint, a sigh and then, "Well, it's really complicated." Oh boy, but I listened, patiently. "It changes all the time. Our hiring manager is out of town for the whole week. You could try later." She gave me an application. I politely thanked her and was out of that flip-floppy store. What kind of genius place posts a huge NOW HIRING sign when their hiring manager is out of town and they have no clue if they're even hiring? They're not doing anyone a favor by posting NOW HIRING when they're not.

Apparently the ethics of a job search are a bit different than the ones we learn to follow in every day life. Following the procedure and politely waiting won't get you very far. On the one hand we have to be pushy and aggressive on the other hand we have to be super cautious of annoying the potential employer. It's not a two way street either. Although employers need employees, somehow the applicants are put in a much more desperate position because so many employers don't even having the courtesy to respond, confirm, or politely reject.

My whole super-superfluous job search, which drove me up the wall, is also a product of living in a hypercompetitive culture. Everyone around me is hypermotivated to make the most of their time, terrified not to miss out on any opportunities. Growing up in a world of opportunities doesn't mean it's easier. It just makes people crazier. For some reason, we coming-of-agers in the first decade of 2000 have been sold on the idea that we need to go go go. We've been hypnotized into thinking that enough is never enough; there's always more to do, to accomplish, to prove. In college we hear myths about students taking 14 classes in one semester, making us feel like lazy bums in comparison. Also, breaks aren't holy. We can take classes over winter and summer break if we want. Even our one week spring break is loaded with opportunities sacrifice more of our precious time whether it be volunteering, shadowing professionals, or playing the endless catch-up game with classes. We're addicted to beefing up our resumes, mortified to think that one day we might not get a job because someone else was better. In this hypercompetitive culture, we spend these tender college years wrapped up in a rat race, always living for tomorrow.

I, too, got caught up in the rat race and, unfortunately, when all you're thinking about is how to run faster and better in order to finish first later on, there's little time or mental energy left to think about the now. Now that the pace of my life has slowed down about a couple thousand miles-per-hour, I see the insanity we're living. It's hard to remain confident about something no one else is doing, so every so seldom I feel pangs of anxiety about taking this summer off when so many of my friends are "making the most" of their summer in some kick-ass internship or whatever. So yeah, this time off isn't adding anything to my resume today. But in the end, this is probably the best investment I could have made for myself and my future.

I mentioned in my last post that I'm not working for the summer. I can't complain too much about being unemployed; on the one hand I love it. I love sleeping as much as I need every night. I love having days upon days to do what I want, even if it's nothing. I'm spending these long summer days in complete chillax mode. By now weeks have gone by without me doing too much of anything, and yet boredom is nowhere in sight.

At the same time, I'm not particularly proud of to boast about my joblessness. What lumps my throat up even more is the fact that I tried--six times--and still nothing worked. Six rejections are enough to deal a blow to anyone's self-esteem, and six times leaves me wondering a bit where I went wrong. I spent serious hours in the career counseling office this year as I geared up for my summer job search. I tweaked my resume and had it reviewed and critiqued a couple times. I had friends read over my cover letters. I didn't do a sloppy job with these applications. My grades are as high as anyone could wish for, and I would have thought that working two serious jobs at school proves that I have some experience and I'm not a bum. So what could have possibly screwed me up so royally six consecutive times?

So you see, this summer time-off thing wasn't exactly my idea. I was sort of half forced into it--and thank goodness for that! I just wish I was smart and confident enough to spare myself from six job searches during the school year when I really could have relished any extra energy for my tired-ass self.