I’m in FIGHT CLUB

No, I’m not. But I feel like Ed Norton in that flick. Wading through the workday, blocking out all stimuli that aren’t conducive to my true adrenaline fix, harboring unsafe and irresponsible disdain for everyone I work with and come across daily. I’m sure I’m going through what everybody does once in a while, that Lester Burnham-esque desire to chew out the boss down the hall and walk out of the office victorious, proud, free,… unemployed . Ari Gold has a great line in season 5 of “Entourage,” where he’s begging Vince to take a shitty movie because, like most Americans, he needs the money . As a working actor, I am no different from anyone else on Earth who works any variety of jaw-droppingly meaningless jobs. But it’s just, having tasted ever so briefly the thrill of acting for a living, actual working for a living seems even more worthless and frustrating to me. Joe Tow Truck in the middle of Nebraska doesn’t know a world beyond his dicksuck job. He honkytonks on the weekend and has a wife and maybe a baby and his blue collar existence and stability is enough to keep him happy, even at work. But I’ve seen the glorious world that non-union commercial acting can provide a young man from the midwest with big hopes in his heart and dreams to fly on. And it makes me want to slice my own cock off rather than go back to a Monday-Friday 9 to 5 monotony.

I don’t of course, because you never know; if things stall with my career,…porn? No of course not. The reason I deal with my day job and bite my lip and figure out ways to spend better than a half of my day surfing gossip blogs, masturbating and writing posts for this site is because, as entitled as I’ve tricked myself into feeling and as marginally [barely] successful as I’ve been as an actor, my job doesn’t suck that much. In fact, it’s only been the last few months that have kind of blown. I used to surf the internet, essentially spamming message boards as a very covert marketing representative. This was literally like the C.I.A. of internet trolling, infiltrating online communities, creating false identities and opinions and then weeks or months later, finally dropping the relevant information or link, pwning n00bs, as I came to understand my profession. This type of shit will probably be illegal in a few years, but that’s why I enjoyed it. It didn’t matter what product or website I was pushing; mayonnaise, motorcycle and pre-teen sci-fi book companies all benefited from my innate ability to bullshit people on the web. I was good at lying, good at selling, and I was making good money working with friends in a pretty cool office (we weren’t rolling around on Segways, but our C.E.O. opened up bar tabs at the adjacent pub on Fridays, this place was cool). Acting leads dried up for a while, but I was still happy, still living comfortably.

Ah comfort. I haven’t felt that at work in a while. Instead of doing my business on the anonymous forums of the undefined internet, nowadays they’ve got me cold-calling websites, essentially begging for free PR. PR for a major studio in Los Angeles. One you’ve heard of. This makes the job no more fun or interesting. This isn’t what I signed up for. Now I have to have my phone voice on the ready when these webmasters call me back. Now I have to interact with people and try to get them to believe something I don’t. You know what I’m fucking doing at this job? I’m acting. And I’m not making anywhere even near to non-union buyout dough for it.

This economy is still fucked. Plenty of people don’t have jobs. I make adequate money. These are all realistic issues that crop up in my head as I play with the idea of liberation. They keep me seated in my rollie leather chair, drinking my free coffee and watching the hot actresses parade by my window on their way into the headshot place next door. As impulsive and, I guess, stupid as I can get, I still am pretty smart and I know I can’t just ditch the “real world” quite yet for the riches and thrills of full time acting. But Lord, do I have to. I feel like I would be a greater contribution to human progress if I simply slept all day until the occasional audition roused me from hibernation, instead of poisoning the world and wasting the time of total strangers, pleading to retweet our product. But I continue onward, because I have to.

I guess the difference is that I may someday get past this segment of my life. This is a job, the career is still in the works. And at least I know, somewhat, how green the grass is on the other side. It’s the memories of being on set and the kick I get from youtubing myself that keeps me going, as opposed to retirement or death for other people. But I can tell you, if I ever make it, I am quitting drugs and keeping my dick in my pants, because I never want to actually work again. Not tomorrow, but certainly not in ten years after I’ve risen then crashed and burned. Success is a very compelling drug, one that actually can benefit you and drive you to acquire more of it, to maintain your emotional high. It’s damn near impossible to get, but once had will keep you jonesin’ for more, keep distracting you at the day job. I guess for now I’ll settle for hope and faith and imaginary circumstances where I set the place on fire then drop a huge cannonball into the C.F.O.’s hot tub. But not forever. Oh sorry, I gotta take this call…

But what the fuck would I know, I’m just an actor.