Those Days That Make No Damn Sense, Natch!

We the unwilling led by the unqualified for so long, with so little, we now attempt the impossible with nothing!

The Tax Man Cometh vs. Evil Economy

It's tax time and the results are in.

Every year it's always shoulda, woulda, coulda…if only that booking had come through, what a great vacation I coulda went on. If only we had cancelled AT&T and paid the penalty for early contract termination...Shoulda dropped that client and smack my mouth for spending over $1K in postage and the post office is losing money because I email too much. I don't want to squander this great invention of the blog on venting, ranting and just plain being a sour puss. Sometimes I want to rejoice, jubilate and dance. But this is not that day. We are in our 15^th year of operation and so many, many aspects of this business have not changed or even evolved. A number of "that's the way it is" kind of stuff has gnawed on me and may eventually kiss the spirit of what this journey means to me, goodbye. It's just about to pick my bones dry. But I think about how far we've come in our own right, and I can get rejuvenated from time to time.

Every year is pretty much a wild ride. There's always the underlying excitement of the next big thing. One phone call or one email and there's a chain reaction of triumph or failure. It all comes in waves. The tide of gigs can ebb and flow in the course of a day, a week and so on. When the tumbleweeds blow into town that's when we dig deeper and deeper to find those jewels we call new clients. It's brutal. New clients are so gung-ho until the tide goes out. The lesson here is that we all have to find that "thing" that sustains us between opportunities. I personally hold it together by watching re-runs of the TV series "Mission Impossible", Burt Bacharach music (yes, I already have my tickets for "Promises, Promises") reading Jackie Collins' novels and the outlandish to the garden variety stage plays and screenplays that are submitted to our literary department. Come to think of it, I'm always going off on actors. I will blog very soon about our writers. I also have 5 lbs. of Aviv Passover Matzos that I get every year free from my supermarket that I nosh on for the next few months. This is my recipe for sanity.

It's getting crazy mad with the expenses and the time that is expended in scouting talent and supporting talent. Last year in particular, there was an influx of criticism about my phantom existence. The deal was that clients were getting downright disgusted that I didn't come to showcases, hold special individual meetings and other absences that got on their nerves. Let me explain. We lost our lease in 2008 to a public transportation friendly location in New Jersey. As the economy tanked, our search to find a new affordable rental office was not successful. So actually, clients with cars was the only way to meet at our main office in New Jersey, or we'd rent a studio in NYC for a couple of hours. Efforts to attend performances in NYC proved difficult because even though we are located 12 miles west of NYC, the traffic is horrendous in this area, so I have to plan to leave at the very least 90 minutes to two hours before performance time. What happens is that this ends up being a 5-6 hour excursion even if it's just for a one hour performance. Plus, the parking is costly. It's just not feasible time-wise during the work week especially since the bulk of the appointments come in after 5pm and at that time I'm on the road and unable to dispatch appointments to you rapidly. Hey, one day I'll have that income that affords me that pied a terre in the city where I can work during the week and scoot back to Jersey on the weekends to be with my friends The situation and Snookie down the shore.

I use to love when I worked as an agent in the city to go to all the hovels in the city that were doing theatre and screening films, taking my life in my hands. I miss it, but as always I'm there in spirit.

I will be writing another little eBook about the things talent reps REALLY don't care about and other things that actors offer other than their talent that is totally useless.

I don't post this to put anybody on blast or drop a dime. I just put it out there to give anyone who's following along a glimpse into my morbid thoughts.

Shout out to my longtime accountant STELLA! Every year, I come stumbling into your office like Stanley and you smile politely and tell me what and whose talents to build upon and what and who to vanquish.

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