I.A.M. Musing About…

So first, the good news.

Jennifer: she’s got a gig with the South Delta demonstration gardenwaaaaay down in South Tswassen. The result is that she’s reasonably well paid to play in teh garden and talk to people about compost, water-wise gardening, vegetable growing for self-sustainability, and all that great stuff she’s perfectly able to do but hasn’t since she got laid-off from the GVRD garden about six or seven years ago. Hurrah!It’s a bit of a drive there — about 90 minutes each way, and through the Deas Island tunnell/traffic snarl — but it’s closer than the Chilliwack campus of UCFV that she drives to twice weekly in the Autumn. The new job involves week-end hours, but she can keep the two principle teaching gigs she has (UCFV for the Autumn semester, and Capilano College for Autumn and Winter semesters), so that’s a substancial win for her, and by extension, us. YAY!

ME: as much as I’ve moved on to bigger and better things with Humdrumming in the past three years or so, I hadn’t dropped the acting fully so that I could do paid work in movies/tv/commecrcials. I had infomed my agent — twice — that ‘extra’ work was not desired by me (too much time, too little money, too much sadness, too much damage to the career if one’s known to be a “meat puppet” instead of an actor), yet she called with a ‘background’ gig anyway, and was I available that evening (it was already 6:45 pm). I told her she needed to start actually reading my e-mails, thanked her, said goodbye, and ended the call. About ninety minutes later I got an e-mail from an on-line actor’s data-base saying they understood I no longer had a talent agent, so would I like to be part of their self-represented/models categories? To date, there is no word of confirmation from her that our contractural agreement has ended. I suppose that sort of correspondence is ‘too icky’ or she ‘doesn’t have the time for that’. What a shame. At least, I hope she feels some.

Anyway, to cut to the chase: I just called the on-screen actor’s union (UBCP/ACTRA) and requested that my full membership in the union be placed in a ‘withdrawn’ status so that I can re-activate it once I can either affored to have delusions of being an actor, or someone is daft enough to want me to wander about a set for them. I haven’t enquired, but presumably the on-stage actors’ association (Canadian Actor’s Equity Accociation) would prevent me from acting in a theatre until I’d re-activated my status with the on-screen union, due to reciprical agreements.

The dream of being an actor / director / designer / wanker is now truly dead.

Bring on the Publishing Dancing Girls! Let the Port flow with abandon, as I proceed to fail at my third chosen vocation! First photography (photographer, photofinishing, retail person, assistent store manager, store owner), then performance arts (actor, singer, dancer, production centre employee, director, designer, reviewer, features writer), and now: BOOK PUBLISHING (typesetter, editor, web-monkey, pre-press preperation, some marketing, some sales)!!

Nurse, check the plasma stocks; I forsee much wounding.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 10:54 am and is filed under BLOG-O-RAMA, LIT-O-RAMA, NEWS, Personal, TECHNOLOGY. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.