The Old Neighborhood

I am writing to you from Hell's Kitchen, NYC, me and Mike's old stomping grounds.  Mike and I had a nice Thanksgiving in Roanoke.  It was good to see everyone especially the family we never get to see, Bob and Mary Ann and Johnny and Mona.  There was a lot of food and many Johnsen family stories were told as is the tradition.  I went through old family photos to find more to put up in our house.  I am trying to bring more of a sense of family history into our home and got a bunch of good ones.  Now I have to get my family pics from Mom and Dad's house, hopefully in January.  Bob, Mike, Ashleigh and Barak did a 5k for charity Thanksgiving morning...while I slept, awful person that I am.  I just couldn't bring myself to do that at 9:00 on a holiday morning.  But they had fun and got some exercise in! Their theory was that the exercise negated any calories they would consume at dinner.  Meal prep was a family affair but the bulk of it was done by Bill and Linda, and Bill did a bang-up job on the gobbler.  Mona has some group pics she's going to e-mail me but here are some others I took.

The chefs hard at work

Thanksgiving table

View from the sitting room

Mike and Ashleigh at the Drumstick Dash 5k

So anyhow now I am in NYC dogsitting my friend Adinah's American Eskimo named Coyote.  Adinah lives in Manhattan Plaza which is a residence for artists of all kinds and it super hard to get into.  Last time I checked the waiting list was more then ten years long.  Every time I go in or out of the building I am passing someone from theatre or television.  Adinah and I did Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music together.  Adinah has done a lot of Broadway including the original casts of Wicked and The Wedding Singer and she has a recurring role as a judge on Law and Order: SVU.  She's got some great memorabilia in her apartment that's not even on display because it's just stuff to her.  Don't get me wrong, she's grateful for her successes but it's all relative. She's got a zillion photos of herself and Morgan Freeman who has been a friend of her parents for over forty years.  Anyway, she is out on the White Christmas national tour and she usually takes Coyote with her but couldn't for this two week leg in Tampa she couldn't so here I am taking care of this mellow pup.



Miss Coyote



I got settled in yesterday when I came in and Adinah took me to brunch.  I went down to Union Square to check out the outdoor Christmas market.  There are dozens of tented kiosks with some great artisan goodies.  Next I went over to Chelsea Market which is filled with bakeries and specialty shops.  Since I've been watching so many cooking shows I've seen lots of more exotic produce I'd love to try but as you can imagine it's not exactly plentiful in Pennsyltucky where bacon is a staple.  So I had a lot of fun in the produce market picking up fun items to try.  I also bought a couple of fun kitchen gadgets at a bargain that I can't wait to try.  I did my grocery shopping as well at our old market and had forgotten how ridiculously expensive everything is.  I about fainted at my bill.

This was part of some art hanging at the Chelsea Market.

Today I was up at 6:00 to take care of my charge and get ready for a couple of auditions.  And while 6:00 is crazy early to me it's a lot better than 3:00 a.m. like when I'm leaving from home to come in so I'm counting my blessings.  First I went to Ripley Grier Studios (get used to these names as you'll hear the same ones over and over and will learn what they are like).  Ripley is two floors on 8th Ave. in midtown, it's dark, and it's always hot and short on chairs.  So when I arrived the lobby was packed with people waiting to get in and most of us were there for the same audition, the Barter Theatre in Virginia.  By the look of the turnout you'd think it was peak audition season instead of one of the most dead times of the year.  Surely this speaks to the state of the economy.  They opened the doors ten minutes late and ushered us to a tiny holding room where we were in a line the snaked like we were in line at Disneyland where we stood for what felt like forever with no monitor showing up.  When the monitor was five minutes late the real grumbling started and some people started calling Equity.  Finally we learned that the monitor had called in sick and we had to wait for their replacement who arrived twenty minutes after sign-up was to start and was super slow and was talking on his cell phone at the same time.  People were really pissed.  Most of the girls had been trying to get to Pearl Studios down the block for a Shrek chorus call and almost all of us missed the list of names being read which meant we had to sign in again at the end of the list.  Luckily the turnout wasn't big so we all got seen eventually but it was unnecessary stress.  A lot of being an actor is finessing your schedule so you can get seen at as many auditions in a day as possible and Equity has hard rules about when and how you sign up and sign in.  I was a frazzled mess with dry chords working on a poor night's sleep going in for Shrek which was my first audition ever in my life singing a pop/R&B song and I bit the big one. Nerves, exhaustion, frustration and vocal problems made for a hot mess of a 16 bar cut of "We Are Family".  I sold it, by god, but it wasn't good.  I'm having vocal issues which I'm thinking may be tied to my allergy meds.  Without them I can't breathe but with them I can't sing.  It's much worse in my lower range which is generally what I use to sell myself sooooooo...not good.  I got back to Ripley just in time to check in for my Barter appointment and changed my planned audition piece after what a mess my first audition was.  I was going to sing a mezzo piece but I switched to a legit high mezzo/borderline soprano piece as my voice is more dependable there when I'm having this problem.  My friend Brent was the accompanist, I love the casting director and the new song choice was wise as it went much much better.

Now I'm showered and fed and drinking a glass (or two, or three) of a nice Argentinian Cabernet and watching TV while mindlessly petting Coyote who is quite content.  I have a seminar tomorrow afternoon but that's it and I'm glad as we're supposed to get three inches of rain!  Rain really stinks in New York since you walk everywhere and forget about getting a cab; that's nearly like winning the lottery.  But lots planned for the rest of my visit so I'll sign off for now and write again soon.



This sign is up at the Christmas tree lot by the apartment