at the start of the seventh grade i was a wreck-- both emotionally and pubescently-- and i was much more of a closet-class-clown than anything else. the idea that the number of pull-ups i was capable of doing had any relation to the number of friends i would have is still something i cannot understand.
and i couldn't do too many pull-ups.
but one of my close friends was a gentleman named mark who was from a different elementary school and i met a lot of my future friends through him. i think at a time, it was mark, myself and our two friends brian and ajay that spent most of our recesses and lunches together.
though to be quite honest, i don't remember how we spent them-- just that we did.
i suppose there were some issues once we got girlfriends-- mark was with a girl named bonnie and i was with leslie, but throughout high school we did remain friends. and eventually we all tried smoking weed for the first time. i remember mark and i were the last to try it and i also remember getting ridiculously high on both marijuana and pixie sticks.
college changed a lot.
mark went to chapman, ajay went to irvine, and brian and i smoked weed while occasionally attending classes at a local community college.
my goal was to become a comedic actor and i didn't think college had much to do with that. but for the most part i studied psychology and sociology.
and there was a day that mark called and said bonnie (who was now his ex-girlfriend) had become an assistant to an art director in los angeles.
the art director-- and bonnie's boss-- was greg aronowitz. he is pretty much the guy behind the anamatronics in jumanji, batman forever and every movie ever. evidently, he was readying his directorial debut and it required young comedians.
mark had convinced bonnie to convince greg to let me audition.
he agreed but only if i could get from san jose to los angeles by 8pm that night.
kyle sped me there.
i will say i failed that audition with amazing skill. i can blame it on the fact i spent the moments before my audition helping crewhands place a life-sized gila monster prop on a roof, but ultimately i was just not ready to be in a room full of antique acrade games, jabba the hutt and a very successful film artist all at the same time.
i completely forgot how to be funny and outgoing and things got very silent. i looked over at bonnie, who immediately looked away from me and back to the strange anamatronic eyeballs she was painting.
and even those eyes mocked me.
i super-bombed.but he gave me a small part despite it all.
basically, i would not be paid, but traveling and lodging in louisiana would be free. and i'd finally have an acting credit better than a high school play or internet pranks.
however, my plans to travel to louisiana and blow the audience away with hilarious acting capabilities was cut quite short when hurricane katrina came and demolished half the filming location.
i guess the citizens of new orleans had it a lot worse than my nineteen year-old self.
and in hindsight, i'm still proud to have been in the same room as someone as successful as greg aronowitz. the man has seriously had his hands in movies ranging from "minority report" to "ali", "saving private ryan" and "the lost world"-- the list goes on. he's even acted in two or three movies.
which brings me to my point:
greg aronowitz starred in the 1999 film "scriptfellas" which i have not seen. but imdb tells me that an actor named eric saiet was in the same film. nobody really knows mr. saiet because he's one of those actors that tend to have thirty seconds of one-lined screen time, but his most famous role was probably as a nameless student in none other than "ferris bueller's day off"
there were a lot of those nameless students played by equally nameless actors, but one of them was polly noonan, except she managed to move up the ladder of film-nonsense and eventually play sally in "novocaine" (yes, i saw it-- but i'm not proud.)
but guess who made a brief cameo in "novocaine"?
motherfucking kevin bacon.
that's right: i can be connected to kevin bacon in six degrees. mark: bonnie: greg aronowitz: eric saiet: polly noonan: kevin god damn bacon.
hell yes.
all of this knowledge hit me while i was outside having a smoke and a coffee and i feel so complete. everything is going to be just fine; everything makes sense-- you don't know what it's like.
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