bloggie blog

Glee has many great things about it — and you can read about those all over the internets, so let me offer a couple of minor complaints. The show could be so much better.

1. Any scene with cheerleaders wearing cheerleader outfits in it pretty much sucks. Painfully clichéd, caricatured and shallow, especially when there’s more than one girl wearing her cheerleader outfit around school.

2. The musical numbers don’t sound like what they look like. Big problem. Huge problem! Come on — give us cred. We are smart viewers, we can handle it. Many (most?) of the actors on this show can really sing quite well, so let us see what it would sound like if we were present in the scene as we see it. Instead, we see obvious lip synching, and we hear instruments that make no sense. Not right! (Please note: I am not talking about fun, surreal moments like when the football team dances to “If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it.” Nope. That’s great. It was staged and we bought it. But almost all other numbers where you hear and see something that doesn’t add up: these make the show less than it could be. If you show four vocalists, let us hear four vocalists in the moment. Etc.)

So much good. So much potential, also, to be that much better.

Thing Two in my on-going list of things that many people talk about as if they weren’t true of other businesses or other cities. (For a more-complete introduction, see Part I.)

Things about The Biz and LA that are not unique, #2
Actors need to know what they’re selling

So many smart teachers, casting directors, agents and working actors will say that actors need to know what they’re selling. You have to consider your “brand” as you choose headshots, as you pursue certain TV shows over others, and so on. (If this concept is new to you, here’s an example of brilliant actor branding being used by a brilliant actor named Kevin: The kind of doctor I play on TV: tall, dark and handsy. Brilliant, just brilliant.) So, actors getting branding and typing advice are getting Good Advice — but it’s not at all unique to acting.

Consider this blog entry for freelancers, Are you up for a mental challenge? It’s published on Job Hacking, a site dedicated to pretty much everything but acting, and Dave says the hardest thing for (Corporate America) job candidates to figure out is “Stepping outside the boundaries of self, and into the world of how others see you.”

Another good article on the topic for general employees and not actors can be found on Mashable in this insightful article called Personal Branding 101.

So the process of figuring out who you are and how potential employers see you, is not peculiar to The Biz. Important, but not unique.

An open letter to James C. Taylor, host of Theatre Talk on KCRW:

Dear Mr. Taylor,

Your insight and coverage are commendable. I listen regularly for valuable commentary on the American theater. There is one important thing you should know about the English language, however. The phrase “Theatre Talk” has four syllables when spoken aloud.

Respectfully,

Kevin Ashworth

As of this week, I am now driving a new car (new to me). It’s called Al. It’s a Nissan Altima, and although the official color is gray, it’s kind of a bluish gray, so Al is “blue steel.”

Anyway, Al has a keyless entry thing. If my fob is on my person, I can get in or open the trunk or start the car, just by pushing a button. You cannot. The button is just sitting there, but if you walk up to it and push it, nothing happens. If I walk up to it and push it, I’m in. You push it, you are zapped dead.

I feel like a member of a secret society! And yes, I just said, “If my fob is on my person.”

Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve learned many things about The Biz. Some of these learnings keep coming up in conversation, and I’ve noticed a trend. The trend is that people in The Biz don’t realize that the same thing happens outside of the world of acting. So today I post Thing One in my on-going list of things people talk about as if they weren’t true of other businesses or other cities.

Things about The Biz and LA that are not unique, #1
College programs in acting don’t prepare you for working as an actor

There are numerous examples of things that are vital to be an actor in LA that don’t come up in grad school. So people say that MFA programs should ditch classes on Greek tragedies and substitute classes on [insert pet topic here: on-camera audition technique, acting for commercials, what you want in a headshot, etc.] because you have to know these things, but nobody learns them in school and furthermore, Aeschylus is worth jack shite when meeting with agents.

Rarely do I hear mention of the disconnect between the academy and the field in other professions. I got a graduate degree in electrical engineering from Cornell, and soon thereafter found myself interviewing for a job at a place in Utah that made PCMCIA cards for laptop communications. This was a typical job opportunity in many ways for somebody with a masters in EE. How much did I know about the details of the job? Squat. How much did they want me to know? Much more than that. How did they make me feel about it? Like sh¡t. (No worries, eventually I got a job in manufacturing at HP and become miserable there instead at the other company. My greenness didn’t bother HP so much. They understood.)

My point is that it happens all the time in many industries. Casting director Bonnie Gillespie agreed with me the other night. Apparently she got a journalism degree from professors that taught typewriters and had never worked in the profession. See what I mean? Not unique to The Biz.

Stay tuned for Part II, branding.

Just a quick note to say that 3 of the 4 baseball series are going the wrong way and the fourth one, I don’t care about s’much. Okay, moving on to basketball football.

I had three auditions today. Not the fist time that has happened, but something else did happen today that is a first for me:

I had 2 network TV auditions in the same day. I’m holding a little celebration as I type this! (Want more deets? Contact me privately.) Rock on.