The Miseducation of Laura Mannino

The Next Ron Howard and Brian Grazer

There are two main industries in LA.  There’s show business and then there’s making money off of people who want to work in show business.  Since moving to LA, I have emptied my wallet to participate in classes, workshops, seminars, webinars, teleseminars, networking groups, events, expos, conferences, websites, etc.  Everyday my email inbox gets crammed with every “secret to success” opportunity:  “Give me your money so I can teach you to accept your appearance and then you’ll be successful!”  “Give me your money so I can teach you to change your appearance and then you’ll be successful!”  “Give me your money so I can put a Band-Aid over your crazy, decades-old emotional issues and then you’ll be successful!” “Learn to use your Daddy Issues to book that commercial!”  LA Weekly should have a “Shit To Spend Your Money In An Attempt to Make Money in An Industry in Which There’s No Guarantee to Make Money” Calendar section.  I’ve always made it a point to never tweet, blog, Facebook, or tell jokes during my stand-up performance about the ins and outs of the career I’m pursuing, the educational opportunities I’ve invested in (or sometimes wasted money on), or the crazies I’ve met along the way.*  No one needs to hear another actor bitch about that terrible audition or that terrible agent or that terrible scene partner in that terrible class with the that terrible teacher. I have enough of a filter to know that directly calling out terrible people and terrible experiences won’t help me at all in this industry…because I’d gladly take a job from them. Hate the game, not the playa.  For the most part, the classes and organizations I’ve been apart of have been immensely helpful, but if you also want to hear some old-fashioned trash talk about the rest, buy me a drink.  After a few sips I tend to get a little “truth-y.”  On some days, it might just take a sip of water.

This week I attended a Q&A with a certain television executive of a certain studio.  This executive was pleasant, informative, and patient.  I’m not saying that to kiss his ass. If I wanted to kiss his ass, I’d hunt him down on Facebook and write this on his Wall, which is what most of my fellow attendees have done already.  I found myself in a room full of unemployed, needy writers, which is the same as being in a room of unemployed, needy actors but with less hair and a higher collective BMI.  All the classic hits were in attendance: Eager Beaver who always has her hand up to show off how much she knows, Guy that laughs too loud and too heartily at the guest’s jokes that aren’t that funny, Guy who interrupts the guest in an attempt to “have a casual conversation” but just comes off rude, and of course, Phlegm-y Cougher.  We learned about what shows make effective spec scripts, why certain shows are successful in syndication, cable vs. network, the politics of the writers’ room, how to get a submission read, why does every show have to be about cops or lawyers or doctors (because David E. Kelley figured out that writing shows about cops or lawyers or doctors will make you a millionaire), and we just laughed and laughed about how actors are so desperate (Pot, meet Kettle).  The night was going swimmingly until Phlegm-y Cougher asked if a studio would pick up a pilot that had Isaiah Washington attached.  Yes, specifically Isaiah Washington, the former cast mate of Grey’s Anatomy that got fired after Gay Remark-gate.  He followed up his question asking if vampires are still “big?”  I stopped wondering what was brewing in this guy’s throat to what was brewing inside his head.  I wished we could spend the rest of our time watching him pitch to a well-compensated television executive a one-hour drama starring Isaiah Washington as a phlegm-y freelance vampire lawyer by day that works from his secluded, dark condo and then turns phlegm-y vampire cop by night.  Our hero’s Achilles Heel: his phlegm-y throat clear heard by his enemies while he lurks in the shadows, ready to pounce and deliver his own phlegm-y, vampire-y justice. But the discussion was diverted by joking about those crazy actors…those crazy, homophobic actors that buy crazy, homophobic homes with their crazy, homophobic money from their successful network shows…about doctors.

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

It’s Like a Logline but a Few Thousand Words Longer: A Reading of LA Literature

The Joan Didion Guide to Fabulous: Your Eyewear Must Weigh More Than You

This summer I checked out a reading at Skylight Books in Los Feliz of The Cambridge Companion Guide to Literature of Los Angeles.  Yes, there are other words written by other people in this town that are not James Cameron or the schmucks that stare at their five-year-old, incomplete screenplays on their laptops at various Coffee Beans.   I moved to Los Angeles from New York last February and carved out an identity in my stand-up and this blog as a fish out of water, lifetime New Yorker that doesn’t get this crazy world of Master Cleanses and being late to everything.  As time passed, LA began to feel like a home and everyone around me would rather I return to New York, than hear me utter another sentence that began with “See, in New York, this would never happen…” I realized I should embrace this city and get to know it.   At the reading, I learned that Bertolt Brecht lived in Santa Monica.  I wonder if he also bitched about the traffic and felt entitled that everyone on the east side should come to him. Contributor Eric Avila discussed Joan Didion’s interest in LA crime, particularly the Manson murders:  “Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, ended at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”  If I was as skinny and rich as Joan, I certainly wouldn’t bother mussing my best Halston pant suit by sitting through murder trials and visiting former Manson followers in prison.  I learned a little history about the building I was sitting in.  In the 70’s until it’s closing in 1994, the store that is now Skylight Books was another independent bookstore, Chatterton’s that supported and sold books of the LA poets at the time, including one of the evening’s readers, Bill Mohr. The gentleman next to me, who did not possess an inherent understanding of personal space and was leaning on my shoulder the whole time, nodded wildly at the reference to Chatterton’s.  By the look of him, it’s possible he’s been sitting in that same spot since the days of Chatterton’s and let Skylight Books be built around him.  When my 22-minute sitcom attention span started to wane, I checked out my fellow audience members.  Like at every event that requires quiet, rapt attention, there’s always a lady rummaging through a plastic bag who never quite finds what’s she’s looking for.   I noticed there was another “Mad Nodder” in the front room.  Every time a reader mentioned a quote, or a book title, this guy would nod away in that overtly presentational way.  I wondered if this how you pick someone up at a book reading since you can’t buy a drink or talk.  “Hey, look at me. I know a lot of stuff about the stuff this guy’s talking about.  Want to come over to my place and do…stuff?” After the reading, I noticed him schmoozing with the writers and I realized his intention was never to pick anyone up (certainly not women), but rather to pick up some job prospects.  “Hey writers, I know a lot of stuff about stuff you write because I also write about the same stuff.  Can you refer me to your lit agent, so I can get paid…for stuff.”  When I was driving back to Echo Park, Sunset was closed off from Douglas Street to Elysian Park Ave because of a murder in a marijuana dispensary.  I wondered if the murder would be worthy of a Joan Didion essay, or if Echo Park would be worthy of Joan Didion.

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

LA Field Trips #12: Huntington Library

"To Catch a Predator " in 1913

Is your house overflowing wit creepy child hobglobins or do we live in Victorian England?

I went to the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens to check out the exhibit, Child’s Play?: Children’s Book Illustration of 19^th Century Britain.  Huntington Library should extend a free bus trip and admission to parents that spend their energy screaming at School Board meetings about “inappropriate books.”  For as long as adults are in charge of creating children’s literature, children’s movie and television shows, kids have always been reading and watching fucked up, crazy shit.  Most of the crazy will go over their heads, but the small subconscious impression that will be left can prepare kids for a world that ‘s bigger than their Justin Bieber bedspreads.  After getting lost in a Zen Garden, a Rose Garden, a bamboo forest, a long line at the café, a giant lawn full of marble statues that looks like the opening credits of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, I made my way to the actual exhibit I came to see. I was allowed to take pictures as long as the flash is off, so now I have a lot of blurry pictures of nothing.  The exhibit was small but chock full of child molestation, naked male fairies, child hobgoblins, murderous trolls, and a biography of the illustrator, Charles Altamont Doyle (dad to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) that includes details about his alcoholism and stay in a lunatic asylum.  One of my favorites illustrations is of the Miss Muffet nursery rhyme from a book of Mother Goose Fairytales, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.  Miss Muffet is chilling with her curds and whey, and lurking behind her was a spider that also happened to be rocking a top hat and old man glasses.  The illustration took a rhyme that means nothing and made into a “Stranger Danger” cautionary tale.  “So Muffet, my web is right about us, want to come over for curds and whey candy and play that hoop and stick game that’s all the rage with you kids these days? And when I say, “hoop and “stick,” I really mean…” Today if there was a graphic on a lunch box of that monkey that Dora the Explorer hangs out with, eyeballing Dora in that “To Catch A Predator” way, the heads of mothers would explode in the aisles of Target and Costco stores across America.

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

Why does my gum taste like salad?

I grabbed lunch at Umami Burger with friend Julie (see the wine tasting post below) at the hipster hangout epicenter, Space 15 Twenty. Space 15 Twenty is a shopping center with an  Urban Outfitters, Free People,  an art gallery and screenings of Spike Jonze films.   Right outside Umami, we noticed a Seedbomb "gumball machine."  For fifty cents you can purchase a ball of seeds of regional flowers and engage in a green terror campaign by bombing areas that need plant life the most: dirt patches, parking lots, abandoned lots...and giant hipster shopping centers. 

Flights of Fancy

 At Silverlake Wine with friend, Julie. Or a bad audition for a wine print ad

I checked out Silverlake Wine's weekly Thursday night tasting. Wine tastings are great because they elevate basic drinking to “engaging in an activity,” “completing a task,” and “learning something new.” Rarely does drinking make you feel good about yourself, but wine tastings always make you feel just the right amount of superior like when you read all the little cards at a museum exhibit or listen to any genre of music that doesn’t have lyrics. Also, you can bring your kids to wine tastings! There were a few kids hanging out with their moms while they cracked open a bottle with friends. If you bring your kid to a regular bar, you’re degenerate but if you bring your kid to a wine tasting, then you’re the cool parent that let’s your kid get a glimpse of adult sophistication. You can buy your kid a hot dog at the Let’s Be Frank Hot Dog Truck parked outside while you shake off your Chianti buzz.  I hit the Rose flight and learned something about grape skin color that I unfortunately can’t remember now, but appreciate the lesson. Many have grown up watching some crazy aunt swill down a jug of room temperature White Zinfindel during the holidays and have since sworn off the stuff. Randy Clement, manger at Silverlake Wine confirmed Rose is in fact “cool and here to stay!” I wonder if we can still be snotty about Merlot? 

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

The OC Fair: Dude, Are You Serious?

For weeks, this awful commercial has invaded basic cable in the Los Angeles area:





And it gets worse:

LA Story: The Walking Man of Silver Lake

Walking is so unusual in LA that when someone does it regularly, that person becomes a local legend.  Last spring, while driving to Trader Joe's, Alex and I saw a short, Snooki-tanned older man, in bright green shorts walking while reading the paper.  While returning from the store forty minutes late rwe saw the same man still walking.  We had no idea back then that he has been walking this  20 mile-ish route since the 80's and was known in the neighborhood as "Walking Man."  Walking Man, or Marc Abrams was featured as one of LA Weekly's People of 2009.   In Brooklyn, we had many local heroes but none were celebrated for their athletic prowess.  There was "Bumps," some guy who lived McGolrick Park, and after years of alcohol abuse, no longer possessed balance...or pants; "Stop N' Shop," some guy who drove his fellow drunks around n a shopping cart; "Greenpoint Admiral," some guy who always dressed as an admiral; "Greenpoint Cowboy," some guy who always dressed like a cowboy; and "Starter Jacket," some guy  who always hung out in our laundromat  always wearing a Starter Jacket.  I can't remember his team allegiance. 

Last week Marc Abrams was found dead in a hot tub (such an LA death).  Today his death was ruled a suicide.  He was under investigation because his medical practice was allegedly a Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory for prescription drug addicts (such an LA abuse of power.).   This past Sunday, 400 people memorialized Walking Man by walking his route. There's something comforting about local celebrities, they give a small town feel to a giant urban sprawl.  Bars and restaurants come and go, people move in and out of neighborhoods, sights and sounds from outside whiz by your car window as you're running late to something, months go by before you see your next door neighbor, but it's nice that there's one constant you can depend on seeing everyday: a tiny man in tiny shorts speed walking and speed reading at the same time.  This same man might have abused his privilege to practice medicine by enabling deadly addictions, while battling his own demons of depression and suicide attempts.  The story of Walking Man gave a neighborhood joy and a common bond.  The possible reality of Marc Abrams is a sad portrait of destruction and isolation.  So LA.