What I Learned 10 Years Out of College

Graduation Day at NYU, May 2001 with my now husband! If you couldn’t tell, this was before digital cameras.

This month marks my tenth year anniversary of graduating college.  I know, I know, I know, how dare I show signs of my real age while trying to carve out a showbiz career in LA! Fortunately everyone who works in show business is bad at math (I once got an F+ in math.  I was so bad at math; I got a grade that is mathematically impossible.  I guess the plus sign means even more failing.)  What was I saying?  Oh right, I’m 25 and happen to also have ten years of post-college wisdom to share.  Here’s what I did right or did wrong and learned from or well, still need to do:

1. Buy a bed.  The moment you trade in your rayon blend graduation gown is the moment you’re officially too old to sleep on wooden planked futon.

2. One well-made article of clothing, pair of shoes or accessory that you worked hard and saved up for beats 12 bags of garbage from Forever 21.

3. Start exercising.  Now.  The day after you graduate join a gym or the Y, buy a bike, pick up your knees and see what jogging feels like…anything! The ability (if you ever had it) to magically burn off beer, Hot Pockets, and meat you bought from a truck will vanish quickly. 

4. No matter how well you did in school and how happy you made your parents and teachers, and how hard you work at your job, you will get fired one day. And it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to you.

5. Take the opportunity to live with 12 roommates in a closet in before moving in with someone.  And don’t move in with that someone if he doesn’t know how to dress himself, do laundry, clean the bathroom, buy groceries, make a meal or pay his bills on time.

6. You’ll never have enough money to travel but do it anyway.  One day you’ll have a mortgage, kids, a broken dishwasher and two weeks out of the year to relax.  You’ll regret not taking advantage of those days when a backpack and a youth hostel were luxury.

7. Wear a bra every time you leave the house.  Fine, you have no boobs but you have nipples and we can see them.

8. Congratulations, you don’t have a class schedule or anyone to tell you what do anymore! That will be fun for one week.  You will then spend the rest of your life wondering if you’re making good use of your time until you drop dead face down in a copy of “The 4 Hour Work Week.” I don’t have any advice, it’s just a warning of what to expect next week.

9. No one will ever invite you into the life you want.  Don’t be afraid of putting in some elbow grease, or throwing those elbows around.

10. I didn’t get to truly do what I want until I was 30 and I’m still not making money at it. Again there’s no lesson here, just a warning of what to expect if you chose to never settle.

This post was originally published on Say Something Funny...B*tch!

Team Rebecca Black!

Unless you’ve been dead or too busy reading books to orphans, you know Rebecca Black’s Friday video has taken over You Tube, Twitter, late night television, and the vitriol of adults.  Adults, grow up.  Is the song lame?  Yes. Is this Ark Music Company possibly taking advantage of stage mothers. Probably.  Is it possible that Rebecca just took her first step towards the 2021 season of Celebrity Rehab. Maybe, but I hope not. Are we all just a little bit jealous of 13-year old-ish girl having 13 -year-old-ish girl fun.  Definitely.  So Rebecca, here’s why I’m rooting for you:

1-Your 13 year-old friends can operate a motor vehicle with other 13 year-old passengers sitting on top of the seat without seatbelts! Nothing bad will happen to you and your friends because you are pleasant looking kids living in a pleasant video world!  Jealous.

2-At the time of this post, you have 88,045,991 views of your video on You Tube.  My most popular You Tube clip: 138 views.

3-You said on Good Morning, America that you’re not the best singer but certainly not the worst. I wish Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, cast members of the Real Housewives franchise and everyone in LA had just a shred of your self-awareness.

4-Your parents are rich and live in a nice home in the suburbs and bought you a hit pop single.  Enjoy it!  You could’ve been born in China and left in the middle of the woods because you don’t have a penis.

5-Cool black guys pop into your life on a typical Friday and interject a rap about why you’re cool.  Black guys never rap about me when I’m buying bud vases at Crate and Barrel or lying to the treadmill about my weight or price comparing shitty wine at Vons.

You’re wearing real clothes and not shoving your underage crutch in anyone’s face, and you’re not trying to be anything else other than a 13 year-old suburban girl.  Keep being you, keep doing your Biology AP homework, keep playing field hockey, go to college, and stay away from anyone with the last name “Lohan.” If you can spend your formative years in the center of a media shit storm and make it to 22 with a college degree, a healthy attitude about food, and an HPV-free cervix, you win.  No one will care that you win because we will have moved on to tearing down the spirit of another girl. Maybe this one.  

I've left the couch...to find a new place to put my couch

Since I’m not having quite enough of a difficult time committing to a blog posting schedule, balancing a side business and a “developing” business (“developing” is a nice HR-y word for “not working actor”), why not throw house hunting into the mix?! The past few weeks my Alex and I have been looking at homes. Our brains are crammed with new abbreviations: PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) HOA (Homeowner Association), and LP (Listing Price) which is usually followed by a “WTF!” Here’s what I learned inn my 14 day old real estate venture:

1-You will have no idea what’s going on until the 130th time it’s explained to you. And then you’ll understand 65% of it.

2-If you made the mistake of getting a Liberal Arts or Fine Arts degree, you won’t be able to calculate the interest rate. Don’t bother. Let the mortgage guy who drives a BMW to figure it out for you.

3-If a house is made of gold, granite and marble, it still won’t be good enough to live next to the front yard of 5 barking rottweilers, two rotting VW Bugs, and one lawn chair (frame only).

4-You’ll now spend your Sundays at an Open House taking 15 pictures of 1 outlet in 1 room and telling the other people checking out the house that the owner did a great job removing the blood.

5-You’ll never make this work:

This post was originally published on Say Something Funny B*tch!

and before we went into escrow on a potential money pit, walked away from it and decided to plan a trip to Europe instead.