The L.A. Report – Part 14
Hey Everybody,
My last report was almost a year ago so I thought
it would be a good time for a new one.
Unfortunately, most of the news is bad but you gotta take the bad with the good, I guess.
In my last report, I told you about my job at
Princess Cruises. That was a 6-month contract-to-hire that was going
pretty well until near the end of the six months. The woman I was working
for got weirder and harder to figure out so I didn't stay for my conversion to
permanent status. I let the contract expire at the end of October,
assuming I could find another job somewhere else. I guess my
year-and-a-half unemployment in 2001-2 wasn't sufficient warning that this kind
of situation could happen again. Well, it has. I've been unemployed
for 11 months now. I've even been looking for contracts in other parts of
the country but there's not a whole lot of mainframe (older technology) jobs
around, at least not for the rate I would need in order to be able to rent an
apartment in addition to paying my mortgage payment. I've also toyed with
the idea of a career change but I would have to take a huge cut in pay
- that is, if an employer would even offer me a job in a field in which I
have no experience. I've learned a few new computer languages (although
not nearly enough) but without real-world experience, no employer is
going to hire you (the classic "Catch 22"). I've been doing a
lot of miscellaneous job hunting on craigslist and found a few
p.c.-related jobs and one writing one but not nearly enough to pay my
bills! So the quest goes on.
One of my goals in studying some of those new (to
me) computer languages was to create a new Web site. Most of you followed
the progress of that project (www.yearbookviewer.com).
It's pretty well complete now but there are only 11 yearbooks on it. The
problem is people just don't have the time or energy to do all that scanning
themselves. I did all the scanning of Joyce's and my
yearbooks. In fact, only one of the books came from a total stranger and
she went to Joyce's high school, so there's not a lot of diversity on it!
Most of you know that my last cat (Spooky) died in
November so I'm now cat-free for the first time in about 18 years. Makes
my apartment a lot lonelier. I'll probably get a couple more eventually
but right now there's just too much up in the air for me.
Most of you know I ran the L.A. Marathon in
March. I finished 6,292 out of 24,528. It took me almost 5 hours -
lousy by my old standards but with MS I'm just glad to be able to run at all!
My MS is still about the same but I've just
discovered that I can no longer play the piano. My right hand is just too
uncoordinated. I can play just fine with my left hand but not with the
more-important right hand. At first I thought it was just because I
hadn't played much in the last few years but I found I can play the right-hand
parts with my left hand with no problem.
At the end of this month I'm running the race I ran
last year for Pancreatic Cancer research. This year I'm running it in
honor of Luciano Pavarotti, who died from it last month. That hit
me a little hard. He was a big reason for my interest in singing and
for my decision to major in music. He had his share of critics but I
personally think he was the best tenor of all time (and I've listened to
recordings of all the great ones: Caruso, Corelli, Di Stephano, Bjoerling, Gigli, Domingo,
etc.). I'm glad I got to hear him at the Hollywood Bowl two years ago.
I got a new agent in February. So far, he
hasn't done too much for me but he did get me an audition for a national Slim
Jim commercial. I got a callback audition on it but, alas, I didn't book
it. That would have been really nice; it would have made me instantly
eligible to join SAG (the Screen Actors Guild, which you pretty much have to
belong to to do any big budget films or TV) and would
have been pretty good money (5 figures?). If you ever see a Slim Jim
commercial where a kid gives a Slim Jim to his "Spicy Side" and
all hell breaks loose in his classroom, think of me. I would have
been the kid's dad (4 lines).
My friend Elizabeth, who moved out here
just to try to be a producer, has gotten into acting instead and has
done a lot more than I have. She's had bit parts on Passions,
Days of Our Lives, Criminal Minds, ER, Grey's Anatomy and a couple of
commercials. Lately, I've been helping her run lines for her
auditions so I feel like I'm at least a little part of the "action".
Speaking of action, there's still a lot of things
going on here. One night this week, to celebrate the American Film
Institute's 40th anniversary, one of the
But nothing impressed me more than to find out
Tarzan's chimp Cheetah is STILL ALIVE. He just celebrated his 75th
birthday in April (chimps usually only live to be about 50 years old in
captivity). And he looks pretty good, too. He has diabetes so he
gets insulin shots, but other than that, he's in very good shape.
Another one of our contra dance acquaintances died
last month. She died unexpectedly of a stroke at age 57. You just
never know.
That's all the news that's fit to print, as it
were.
'til next time,
Jay
