Back in Auburn

I got back to Auburn last week, and from the outside perspective, I believe my life got a lot more boring, hence the lack of updates ;-)

I’ve been spending my time cleaning my apartment and getting ready for a few days travel before my trip to Mexico. I’ll be leaving for Mexico on the 29th of June, but before I go, I want to visit friends and family in northern Alabama and Tennessee, so I’ll be driving up there sometime this week.

I have a few more pictures from my last few days in Hollywood. I should be uploading them soon. For now, getting my apartment in order has had the highest priority in my TODO list :-)

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The Acting Corps

Here’s a picture I took of the Acting Corps, where I’ve been in class every weekday for the past month:
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Here are all the talented people who were in my class. I love you guys!
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Left to right:
(Top Row: Mary, Brad, Rufus, Brenton, Me)
(Middle Row: Candice, Megan, Menno, Rachel)
(Bottom Row: Ghaea, Mike, Crystal, Svetlana, Casey)

Here’s my Technique teacher, Adrian. He’s officially awesome. You heard it here first.
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Friday was our last day of class, and I’m surprised how close I feel to everyone here after only a month. It’s been a wonderful experience. I miss everybody already!

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Weekend Plans

Today I was restless staying at the house, so I took the train downtown. I walked around a bit and grabbed a slice of pizza, then headed back to North Hollywood to go to Mass. I went to the Saturday Vigil Mass today because tomorrow I plan on going to the beach in the morning. Also, I chose to go the Spanish Mass, which was good practice for when I’ll be in Mexico.

Just a quick update, thanks for all the comments guys :-D

P.S. The time zone difference means that even though I’ve posted this on Saturday night, it shows up as a Sunday post.

P.P.S. I’m still working on a piece of the site which will allow me to write comments which will be highlighted as being from me. This is to avoid anybody from writing a comment as “nathanbw” pretending to be me. When finished, any comment I write will either have a tag on it, or be highlighted in a different color. Just a heads up that until it’s finished, I’ll be slow to respond to individual comments :-D

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Out on the town

This Sunday and Monday, I finally made it out to see some of the tourist spots.

Sunday, I took the Metro to the Hollywood Blvd/Highland Ave stop. As I was riding the escalator to street level, I heard loud music playing. Turns out a local B-Boy crew was laying it down on the Walk of Fame:
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After watching the dancers for a few minutes, I started to walk around and check out the stars on the sidewalk. At the Chinese Theater (I think?), I found Eddie Murphy’s footprints:
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I then found my way to the top of a nearby shopping center, where I had a bird’s-eye view of the performers below:
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This singer was in the middle of an acoustic cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella” when I took this picture:
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After taking in the sights at the Walk of Fame, I started exploring the other blocks in the area. I’m not sure where I found this poster, but I thought it was interesting:
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Here’s the famous Hollywood sign as seen from Sunset Blvd:
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I’ve never seen such a big advertisement before:
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I ended up making a wrong turn on Santa Monica Blvd (actually just missed the right turn,) and here’s where I ended up. Scary neighborhood, that ;-)
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Actually, that was the only place where I was approached by what appeared to be a homeless person. She didn’t look the part, though (she seemed to be well dressed,) but she approached me asking for money to get off the street. It was quite bizarre.

I continued to “Sunset Strip” (I think :-), where I found a newspaper box for The Onion, which I was quite excited to see. It was empty, though.
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In the same area, I came across this random expensive-looking car ;-)
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From a nearby parking lot, I saw this view of some buildings:
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The hill I was on was quite steep. After riding and walking up the hill, I coasted down at great speed. Luckily, the coaster brake on my bike was enough to slow me down at the red lights ;-)

On Melrose Avenue, I saw this piece of art on a building:
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And that pretty much sums up the pictures I took on Sunday. On Monday, I went out with my new friend Jack, who was quite interested in looking at shoes. We hit every single shoe store on Melrose and eventually made it to Beverly Center (a rather large mall.)I’ve never seen more shoes in one day in my entire life.

Once again, we took the train and got off at the Hollywood/Highland stop. On the way from the station, I saw this huge ad:
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We debated whether the ad was painted on the building, or instead a series of screens attached to the surface of the building. What do you think?

On Melrose, this trike was parked:
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Also on Melrose, the LA Improv:
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So those are the pictures I took while “out on the town.” The most random things catch my eye, so I hope you enjoyed this motley assortment of pics :-)

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Feelin’ Good

On Thursday I went to take a nap at 5:30 PM and ended up sleeping until 3:00 AM. I then stayed up all through Friday, which was a tough day, as we did the scenes we’ve been working on all week at the Acting Corps. Last night I actually got some sleep, so today I’m feeling quite rested.

The scene went pretty well. My scene partner, Rufus, is amazing, and did an absolutely excellent job with his character. Apparently I wasn’t actually all that bad either (I did feel I could have done much better.) We did our scene once, and since our teacher had very little direction for us, that was it. I definitely see major room for improvement on my part, but that’s what we are here for :-)

This weekend I want to put acting out of my head and instead focus on just having fun. Just now I’m going to find out to a park in which to run, walk and work out a little bit. Monday, I plan on going to the downtown area, and hopefully in the next few days, go to the beach (Ben, you know what that means ;-).

Thanks for tuning in!

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Model Material

I went to Mass on Sunday at St. Patrick’s again, and as I was leaving, I was approached by this lady who asked if I had three hours to spare in the afternoon, “for a modeling job. You see, I need a white guy, and you’re whi–you have that light-skinned complexion.” I really was the only white guy at Mass my age, but it was still funny that she was so up-front about it. I told her I had plans (I did,) but she persisted, mentioning she was willing to pay $50 for the afternoon. I turned her down anyway. Maybe I should have taken the job, but making friends is more important than getting paid now.

The plans I had were to hang out with this random group of people I met at McDonald’s who are from a local church. As it happens, they didn’t return my call, but that’s cool. I ended up getting some work done on my website, going to the Sunday evening Daily Acting Workout, and meeting the newest person staying here at the Chateau. His name is Jack, and he had just gotten in on a flight from London. He’s a hip-hop dancer, and is here to study dance. I hope I can hang out with him sometime and learn a few new moves.

The work at the Acting Corps is picking up and becoming a lot more interesting. On Friday and today (Monday,) we had our scene study class. All the exercises we’ve been doing during the week come together as we work on putting a cohesive scene together. We were given a scene to work on over the weekend, and we each performed our scenes in class today.

My partner and I worked hard on our scene, and I feel we received a great compliment from our teacher. We did our scene, and when we finished, she just nodded and said, “It was interesting. I just watched two people have a life on stage.” We did the scene just once more after refining our character’s objectives, and I feel we did a satisfactory job.

I’m finding the work of acting to be quite challenging. Our scene was perhaps 2 minutes long when we performed it, but we spent about 2 hours rehearsing it. Even then, I see vast room for improvement. Although I am pleased that the teacher found our work to be satisfactory, I still feel I have so much to learn. I’ll just be keeping my nose to the grindstone!

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Weirdo

Today I got my hair cut, and since I thought it looked good, I took a picture of it:

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I took this picture right before I got on my bike for the ride home. I also decided to take the opportunity to get pictures of my bike before I rode home. I got some interesting looks from people as I walked across the parking lot, put my bag down next to my bike, pulled out a camera, and proceeded to take pictures of myself and my bike, which was parked right in front of the Carl’s Jr.. Note that at the time of the pictures, the bike was still locked up, so nobody necessarily knew that it was mine. I glanced over in the middle of taking these shots to see a look of curiosity from one of the workers on break who poked her head around the corner. I wonder if she thought my K-Mart Huffy was some sort of rare collector’s item that strangers would stop next to it and start taking pictures of it. After I went, I bet all she thought was, “Weirdo.”

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See my reflection in those shiny chrome fenders? STYLING!

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Notice the coaster brake on the back wheel – I thought I was done with those when I got my first 10 speed!

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Classic Huffy style ;-)

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Pictures

I finally made it to the store and got a memory card for my camera. Here are the pictures I took on my flight to LA:

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I plan on taking more pictures in the day to come. I’m still getting over this freakin’ cold which is making me tired.

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First Day of Class

Today I had my first class at the Acting Corps. The class was good and I’m excited about the weeks to come.

I do have a cold, though, and last night I didn’t get much sleep due to sore throat, so I was pretty tired through the whole class. I hope I can get over this cold very quickly and start getting more out of my time here.

I left from class and slept the rest of the day, so I didn’t get my camera working, but I want to get it going tomorrow, as I’d like to start posting pictures.

Anyway, I’m tired, and writing a bunch of run-on sentences, so I’m going to sleep.

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