A Smattering:

I got a call from the background agency I registered for, which was in itself shocking because they never call people.  The person on the line was a desperate agent:

"We need someone who is able to go to a studio and play a young prostitute-looking-part for a photo."

"oh...Um...okay."  Interesting.  Being stereotyped is pretty unavoidable when it comes to casting, but this was certainly a first.

"And it's today."

"Oh, I might be able to do that.  Am I supposed to provide my own clothes?"

The agent laughed.  "Um..probably not?"

One last thing crossed my mind. "Wait!  You did see that I checked no nudity, right?"

"Oh yes! You'll just probably be scantily clad."

"Okay, let me check with my manager."

Well! I had already been an hour late to work because somehow I had turned off the 2 alarms I set for myself, and was grimacing at the idea of asking my manager to leave early.  The woman said it would all work out and gave me the number for the tape.  Every casting director sets up their own line, tape and extension number with the directions to the shoot, where to park, what to wear, how long to expect it to go.  After listening to this tape, I determined that yes, I was supposed to bring my own clothes, 2 outfits even, and I was supposed to have my hair and make-up done.  Seeing as I had just spent an hour driving to work without these things, I had to decline.  


It would have certainly been an interesting experience, and something fun to blog about, but all I could picture was me showing up to set unprepared and getting in trouble.  So instead, I spent the day at work doing research for a new possible series by watching an awesome 3-part documentary on Car Crashes. Although this did not make driving home later fun at all.  




Because of the things I've been doing in the developmental department, reading books, contacting specialists, watching documentaries.  I have a lot of information to share.  Here's some of it:


1.) Swimming - If you fall over a cruise ship, try to keep your clothes on as you float because if you get sunburned, you're in big trouble.

2.) DO NOT take a nap/put your iPod on during the safety instructions and do not get drunk before the plane ride.  There is a Rule of 11 on a plane where the first 3 minutes, and the last 8 minutes are the most dangerous.  Stay alert during these.

3.) Planes - Actually listen to the safety instructions.  You CAN survive a plane crash, so learn how.

4.) Planes- When the flight attendants are saying "hi" to you at the beginning, they are really checking to see if you seem alert/able-bodied and ready to help during an emergency.

5.) Planes - When you are reaching your seat, look for 2 emergency exits.  Count the number of rows until that exit, so that if the plane is engulfed in flame, you can count until you find the exits.

6.) Planes -In the case of an emergency water landing do NOT inflate your life vest early.  This is because you still might need to push yourself out of a very small space to actually get to the water where you can float.

7.)Planes- Car crashes - WEAR A SEATBELT.  A man by the name of John Stapp took a really big risk, and let himself be seatbelted onto a rocket sled.  He went over 600 miles per hour in 1.4 seconds and he survived, thus demonstrating how much you can withstand if properly seatbelted.

8.) Car crashes- Put your kids in the back until their old enough.  Because most Americans aren't intelligent enough to wear seatbelts, the airbag has to be deployed with enough force to stop an average sized adult going through the windshield, and can instantly kill a child.

9.) General- If you find yourself in any sort of bad situation, remember the Rule of 3 that they teach at Armed Forces Survival camps:  you canot survive
                                                3 minutes without air - 3 hours without shelter

3 days without water - 3 weeks without food.

3 months without companionship

10.) Car Crashes- It is an unfortunate fact of psychology that people separate themselves from victims of accidents.  The car-human relationship is one where people act as though they are getting into an "immortality machine."  The reality is car crashes have killed more people than all of the people who died fighting for the U.S. in all of our wars combined.  

11.) Car crashes- when people hear of new safety features installed in cars, they tend to drive more recklessly, thus misappropriating safety features as performance features, and basically canceling out the benefits of the safety features.  If you have a car with improved safety features, you still need to drive safely!!!

I'm sure I have more, but that's everything I can think of now...don't you feel better prepared!  For a lesson on the history of the car and it's development, tune in next week! 

And now it's time for that wonderful game:  guess where Laura started crying during Brave!

Trick question!  I started tearing up during the short beforehand.  When the dad and grandpa gave the little boy his cap, and welcomed him into tradition.  Beautiful. 

Seriously though, if I hadn't been at the movies with 3 people I didn't know that well, I probably would have sobbed recklessly throughout the whole movie.  First of all, it was gorgeous, and secondly I was so moved to see a female protagonist up there that I also wanted to cry.  I both loved and was annoyed by this movies, both in the name of feminism.  

Pros: It was starring a girl, she practiced shooting to get good, she wasn't just innately compassionate, finally there was a positive mother-daughter relationship portrayed in a fairy-tale-esque story.  Usually the mothers are the monster, the villains, the step-mothers who grow jealous of their new children.  

Cons:  The message is still, archery is a boy thing, but don't worry girls, if you take a liking to boy things, and practice enough to be mind-blowingly proficient at it, then we might respect you as a rare bad ass.  

Damn it, if I have a daughter and the daughter wants to be the best seamstress or cook or stay-at-home mother as opposed to a doctor or a venture capitalist, I'm going to love and respect her equally. That's the point of 3rd wave feminism.  

This is one thing that bugs me most about some women my age.  I cannot tell you the amount of conversations I have had with college-aged girls where they will defend themselves to be bros, make sure everyone knows that they enjoy watching sports. distance themselves from any kind of "girly girl" association, claim that they don't want to have daughters because raising daughters would suck, make sure everyone knows that they have more guy friends than girl friends, had to be convined to live in their sorority because...a house full of girls...everyone knows how terrible that is,  I even remember someone wanting to join a certain sorority last year because that sorority was just "a bunch of girls who like, hate other girls." I swear these were all real conversations that I have had multiple times.  Many of the women I have spoken to are either subconsciously or consciously aware that to participate in girl-culture, that to somehow seem as though we actually identify with our own gender, is not as cool or desirable as identifying with male culture.  

Other cons:  It was about family....which is good....but, as someone else I was discussing this movie pointed out, Up was about infertility and loss, Wallie about like saving the world from global warming and consumerism, Toy Story about testing friendship.  So to have the first Pixar movie starring a female also be about family...just feels a little disappointing which leads me to my final point that I read in another blog.

None of the other movies are ABOUT being boys.  Brave is decidedly about the unfortunate lot of being born a girl.  As another friend pointed out, we need those movies too.  However, the movies that we also need, that are so rare and hard to find, where the female character exists not as an anomaly as Merida does in Brave, but just exist with the merit of being human.  As the Geena Davis foundation has calculated, only 17% of the people shown on television and in movies are women.  Not surprisingly, women hold  about 17% of the available leadership roles.  People are comfortable with what they see.  

On a lighter note... my work had great cupcakes at a party on Friday!