My Day as a Marathon Runner part 1.

This is me now. I've been working out.
and i joined the military on weekends
without telling anyone. and i decided
to get a nasty tattoo.


Saturday was my first day ever as an extra in a commercial with 500 other people. I got the notice from an email casting service that sends me scads of emails every day. Normally they're for specific categories like

African-American Female 20-25 needed for one day model shoot. Horseriding skills preferred. Also must speak spanish.

My acting chops are pretty good, but I don't know if I could pass for that. I mean, I'm no Felicity Huffman but I am pretty hot.

So this notice came in for something that I thought I could do -

Americans between 25 and 60 needed for Bacardi commercial. Must be in reasonably good shape and own a tank top and shorts.

This sounded plausible, of course I did have to buy a tank top, but K-mart was nearby, and they do have everything an actor needs there, like low priced shoes and ho-ho's at the checkout aisle.

So there I was lined up with 300 other people at 4 in the morning in front of an old cathedral which seemed strangely out of place for the drunken surroundings.

I went to bed at 11 and woke up at 2:45 to get there at that time. I was thinking that it was pretty early for a Saturday morning and then as soon as I got outside I remembered "Oh yeah, I'm in the East Village and everyone is still up and running around drunk and hailing cabs"

The email I got said the first 100 people get in and it looked like there was more than that already so I figured I might have been out of luck. Why for the love of God couldn't I have got up at 2:35?

But then I got to the front of the line and my name was on the list so everything was okay and soon I was eating tons of cheap breakfest food like eggo waffles, pastry strudels, and dozens of McDonalds like generic fried eggs that were all uniform somehow.

The waiting area looked like a segment from Oz as hundreds of "urban" types were all decked out in their Hilfigers, hairbands, and Ho girlfriends with the requisite boob jobs. So I decided to wait outside with this black guy I was talking to who apparently hadn't kept up with sports for years and asked me 20 questions about what Kevin Garnett was doing and what Derek Jeter's batting average was (and yes I knew the answers).

After sitting outside dispensing sports trivia for over an hour, I decided to go inside and see if anything was ever going to happen. The natives were growing restless and I had been busy doing nothing for over an hour. There were several people running around giving crowd shouting general directions like "remember you're all playing runners." So I figured they were in charge. At the time I had been holding trash from the breakfast that they so graciously provided for me and the other crack whores that made it out and I was wondering how long should I go on holding to it so I asked one of the yelling people were the trash was. One of them pointed behind myself to the receptacle. Then I tried to ingratiate myself with an hysterical woman with a microphone.

You would have thought that I would have learned something from my wedding adventure, but alas I did not. Stupidity runs deep.

So here's me - while looking at my watch I noticed that it was 5:10. So I ask her, "Do you think we'll be shooting by 6?"

This threw off a red flag and I was instantly vaporized and sent off to another dimension of pain. Well it felt like that. What actually happened was that she looked at me and said, "Okay you're done asking questions for the day."

It was one of my favorite "I'm the big director and you're a peon that I could squash" moments like ever.

Sometime later, and I mean much later, we were lined up outside and several different people were shouting things at us like "Remember you're a runner" and "Like maybe you guys should be scattered because like it's supposed to be the middle of the race."

This story will be continued tommorrow or the next day. I'm too tired to work on it any more and it was getting all Homeric and stuff. In other words long, but I know everyone loves that.

And when I say everyone I specifically mean the people that read this thing, which can't be but like 7 different people I think.

Goodnight all.

Goodnight moon.

and......johnboy.

okay I said it.

now deal with it.

more on the story later.

for real!