Acting Made Complicated: Part One

Well since I know that I hate jogging and that even if I do drag my ass out tonight it will most likely never happen again, I will go ahead and relate to my four readers(Dunkle, My dad, my sister, and Chris Dandurand) another funny and unique happening in this otherwise normal existence that I lead out here in Asia.

The week was finishing as most do. It was Thursday night and I was sitting at home on my computer wasting one last evening before the impending weekend could bring all types of activities to make my wasting seem a bit more meaningful or at least eventful.

I received a quick instant message via Internet chat from a friend who indicated that a friend of his had a friend who's friends were in some form of the "entertainment" business here in Taipei and they were in need of "western" (white) actors to fill up some negative space in their upcoming commercial. I was initially interested in the opportunity as I found the pay rather lucrative considering the minimal amount of work and the chance to get some much needed camera time, but after a quick "it could run from 4 to 8 hours" remark I realized that this would interfere with my lazy Saturday, so I declined and felt if nothing else, relieved disappointment.

However, the next day I talked to another friend of that first friend who said that he would also be interested in trying out some acting if only we could do it together thus allowing for the opportunity to either 1. have a total blast or 2. have a terrible and miserable time, but less so when suffering with another.

We signed on and it was decided that our acting careers would commence on Saturday, April 11, 2009.

We showed up late to some sort of university here in Taipei to discover that the higher paying parts had already been given to two guys who, at first we believed to be the "talent," but just stolen the parts because of their prompt arrival. We took some seats in the back of a dark and half-full auditorium where as the only white guys surrounded by other Taiwanese men and women dressed in similar suit and business attire.

The group had obviously been waiting for us, as we were about an hour late, because the second our asses hit the chairs the lights went out and the cameras flashed on and "action...rolling!" was called out in a Chinese accent too funny to describe in any form of typing whatsoever.

It was then that the hilarity and atrociousness of the day really kicked in. Now it may help to give you a little more information about what we understood going into this experience. The first thing we knew was that everything said during the filming would be dubbed over in Chinese later. We were instructed to say whatever we wanted to this fake audience as long as we moved our mouths and made lots of "business related" body gestures.

The first guy stood up and was dressed in a fashionable well-fitting suit and smiled into the crowd with a confidence that made me understand why he had won the part rather than my less than disheveled self. Oh but how appearances do deceive.

A PowerPoint slide show began on stage and the outwardly comfortable white guy was told to use his laser pointer, fantastic smile, and good looks to pretend to give an informative presentation to this made up group of "clients" as the giant camera rolled in front of him filming his every move.

My friend Graeme and I's weak attempt to remain polite and quiet was botched the second this guy opened his broken Russian mouth to reveal a speech off the top of his head about some picture of a guy being his ex-boss, the joys of drinking vodka, some girl who may or may not have been his ex girlfriend, and many picture descriptions put simply with the words, "I don't know what is it."

Now after seeing the slide show two times I could tell that the product in this commercial was obviously some kind of ancient Chinese herb that through time and medical breakthroughs had become more mainstream and was now being made into a common over the counter drug to help a person's kidney. It was easy to derive this simple message, but take after take with these blabbering Russian's only forced them to drift further into obscurity as their attempts to jsut say anything to the camera became more and more impossible and they drifted further away from what the commercial might have actually been about.

Then came Ex-KGB agent number two's "presentation."

The second Russian's presentation had Graeme and I in tears. Keep in mind that Graeme and I and the two other westerners there were the only people who understood what these guys were talking about as they were filmed in front of an audience for a commercial that will be on television within the next week.

(An old painting of a man in traditional Chinese dress comes on screen and next to him there lies a plate with what looks to be several kinds of dried herbs and plants.)In comes Russian retardboy drawing circles around the man's crouch over and over with his laser pointer.

"Hello....ok well....this man is some man....I don't know who is he but he is very big man in Taiwan or China I don't know. He has this bowl here and we can see that it is the medicine or maybe it is a poison. You see at our company we have learn to make both the medicine and of the poison and many people do not know which to use."

(You might to know that everyone else suggested he simply tell a story like the Three Little Pigs just to make his mouth move and to keep himself talking. No one said that he should invent his own bizarre product and then make a presentation about it using slides devoted to another product of which he knew nothing about. Also remember that the only thing this guy could see was a giant TV camera, an auditorium full of straight faced or sleeping Asian people, and two white guys now carelessly laughing and rolling at him as he butchered the English language in his wild and rapidly descending speech.)

"Many peoples take of the medicine for their loved ones when they are sick, but you always give sick people medicine and then they just get more sick and take more money. Our product is a very nice poison that you can use to save your money. Wouldn't it be great if you could just poison your family if they were sick so that you didn't have to give many medicines?" The uncomprehending crowd is still nodding their heads in agreement to the Blah blah blahs that they are unable to interpret.

"We say that you buy our product (please try to imagine Borat saying all of this and you'll know how we felt) and have the poison for you."

And then he really got carried away with his last stunning monologue.

"You see with our poison you can give it to anyone. You can kill your mother or you can kill you father. Go and use our poison to kill your children and to kill you aunt or you uncles. It will kill everyone and then you will not have to use any medicines. Dis poison is very good...." and then he apparently caught on to what he had just been saying for the past couple of hours.

From here he went on to, first speak Russian to his friend, and then to quote a long and complicated Russian poem about a word that kept recurring throughout: "prostituta." This poor guy was seriously giving one of the most psychotic and messed up business proposals many will ever hear. He was doing this into a live camera, in front of a bunch of random foreigners, in the light of a Chinese power point, in a three piece suit that looked to be about three sizes too large as it sagged all over his body.

I mean you just can't make that shit up!

His farewell monologue had him looking sweaty and obviously uncomfortable as even his friend was now unable to support him. He said a little more about his mythical poison that I hope he never actually creates and then went to even more desperate measures. As his anxiety increased so did his difficulty with creating whole English phrases.

"So now I don't really know what to do or to say. Can someone please help me? I...I....I no know. I...do you have any questions for me or what could I do I mean, well you could say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.....(yep he started counting he was that desperate) oh I mean I just don't know. Please someone help me I cannot.... oh help.... what do I say..............well you see we have a great poison and only the rich people can have the poison." He was back on a role again. "Our poison is da best poison and so only the rich will be able to have our poison because then they can poison the poor peoples. So we will give to all the riches and of the poison.." and then we was silenced and a great weight was lifted from his body and heaved onto those of the five other English speakers who now had to spend the last moments avoiding the creepy poison salesman who's sickeningly weird subconscious had just revealed itself in the form of the worst verbal diarrhea to hit our ears.

After three hours of switching camera angles and doing different takes with different lighting and even taking bathroom breaks this guy had continued to stand up and return to the same speech about some sort of crazy fucked up poison that he thought would make this glib and dark world more manageable. We could not believe how uncomfortable and yet hilarious this situation had become, and it was only 1130am.

Several times, the guy would finish his terrifying speech about killing people and we would all give him a standing ovation which I imagine, once in commercial form, will look simply like people cheering on this amazingly groundbreaking kidney medicine spokesman as he is dubbed in Chinese. No viewer will ever know that the "visiting business man" in the advertisement was actually speaking in his sterile and horrifying Russian accent about his passion for creating a product that could help him, and all the other kill crazy people of the world, brutally poison and kill all the members of their family.

Let me tell you, I have never witnessed anything as amazingly awesome as that guy making such a huge ass out of himself. When he made the remark about killing one's kids a girl from Massachusetts, who probably goes to church every Sunday, actually jumped out of her seat. There were about 50 people in the whole room and only 5 of them actually understood what this guy was rambling about.

After the psycho killer left to go find some family member to poison it was our turn to step up to the plate and show our acting skills.

I was cast to do the pretend post-interview. I would, through my body language and hand motions, pretend to explain in an informal way our excitement and giddiness about this new kidney product (or poison.) I had about five cameras around me and it looked like a fake little press conference where I was the leading CEO type figure whom everyone wanted to interview.

I began by telling all of the Taiwanese gentlemen how excited I was about eating sandwiches and that I especially liked ham and cheese sandwiches. I knew I could say anything, so this was the topic I picked. I talked about the size of sandwiches that I enjoyed and we even did a wonderfully fake laugh when I said I hate when the pickle slides out the back of the sandwich and lands on your shoe. I even threw in a little thing about how I like to put that Russian guy's poison on sandwiches and feed them to my whole family on beautiful summer mornings. I got a lot of smiles and "oh yes yes" from my audience. No one had the slightest clue what the hell I was talking about and I was about about 10 to 15 years younger than all of them and yet they were still all keenly pretending to listen to my sandwich rant as if I were the celebrity CEO of this mythical medical company. I was also getting paid about three times more than them because my minority status here means that it is harder to find people like me to do these things.

Once again, you just can't make this shit up.

So that about sums up the first half of our descent into the Taiwanese entertainment industry. After the fake interview about sandwiches and a talent agent offering us membership with their agency (which we accepted haha) we packed up to get ready for our next shooting location. This next shoot would simply involve Graeme and I, another white girl, our agent, twenty randomly selected Taiwanese people, the wild haired visionary of a director who screamed at us in Chinese until our agent made basic translations for us, and a fat Chinese opera singer who's life as an European opera star had helped him to become fluent in French and fascinated by every type of exotic woman of the world. Our afternoon with these people was incredibly strange and exciting and ended with us crying so hard of laughter on camera that Graeme actually had to leave the room to be able to breath. We also ended up being on camera for every single scene.

So please do read on next time if you dare!

Free time makes you feel what?

Free time. Ohh free time is nice. A little free time is great when you are caught up in work and the rush of life. Sometimes you get more than just a little free time and that is great too. You might call this a vacation or a holiday and you might find that you enjoy it a lot because you have so much free time that you are temporarily released from your otherwise stressful, or in the least repetitive, duties to enjoy a bit of the sweeter things in life. There is also that middle amount of free time. It is time that you have free but is never that far away from more work but and merely allows you enough time to complain about what you could be doing in exactly the time that that middle time allows you.

I have middle amounts of free time and it is hard to use them wisely and efficiently. To many, the amount of free time that I am allotted in a day would be rather pleasant and would enable one to do a myriad of fun and profitable things. I however, have accustomed myself to a pattern of creating things to do and then spending, or wasting, my time planning them out in great mathematical detail until the time is up and I must resume my work or whatever thing I would call not free time that interrupts the free time that I am lucky to have but waste.

Everyday I arrive at work at around 8:35 am and I am allowed to enjoy a little free time until class begins at 9. This will often be the most productive time in my day when one considers the many other moments of free time that I will be given throughout the day.

During these 25 minutes I will often try to plan my upcoming lessons. This typically involves making photocopies to provide for maximum busy work. Photocopies are amazing because the beautifully pleasant children can do a silly ABC activity on a sheet of paper and then when they finish I can make the suggestion, "Oh wow! Great job! Can you draw teacher a picture on the back?" This helps to fill a lot of time.

Other times I will prepare by reading through the teacher's manual and search through different methods and activities that suit my style. My style is one of extreme relaxation and an easy going attitude in the class and the early morning stupor doesn't aide in reverting from it. I still manage to prepare fun and interesting activities that require little work from me other than an occasional "NO SPEAKING CHINESE!" threat or the classic, "WHY DID YOU DO THAT? YOU BOTH SAY YOU ARE SORRY AND GO DRINK SOME WATER." (Whenever trouble is brewing I throw out the "go drink some water" comment and everything is saved by the children's mouthwatering desire for a little free time themselves.)

However, most other mornings I will neglect to do this photocopying and that lesson planning to go slouch in the tiny 4 year old chairs like a giant with my ass hanging over the sides to drift into a sort of hypnotic state where my face resembles that of a drugged out groupie's as he watches a Pink Floyd laser show in a planetarium. I zone out until the heart attack inducing baby music about sharing and saying thank you BLARES through the speakers. This is a new policy directed at all the teachers who's similar morning rituals has caused them to be so late every morning that such drastic methods seem to be the only solution.

My day continues on until I am given the longest break of the day between 11:30am to 1:30pm. There are surely many people who could find ways to do great and amazing things with this kind of free time but my colleagues and I choose to spend the two hours in our own way.

All the singing and dancing and yelling and sneezes in the face get one more than a bit exhausted and famished. I, along with my colleagues, WE, will usually dine with the children on whatever slop is served that day. I hadn't believed the worst about the food until I realized that it was cooked along with the breakfast at 8am and then left in several steal pots until it was brought into our classrooms at a deliciously steam less room temperature. However, it still isn't that nasty and when you are trying to be the cheapest mofo this side of Manila, free lunch is a great deal.

I will usually eat and make funny faces with my half chewed mouth, thus bringing my students to an unruly laughter most unsuitable in the eyes of the more stern and anal Chinese teachers, for about twenty minutes and then it is downstairs for socializing hour with the ill-tempered coworkers.

Now keep in mind we are all good friends and spend most of our real out-of-work free time together as well, but during this time we love to talk shit about people, complain of things in general and even go onto each others facebook sites to tell amusing stories involving "this girl who seemed beautiful at the time" and that guy who's movie list is "piss poor" and the other dude who's ass "I totally kicked!" We enjoy ourselves until someone gets those heavy eyes that either mean 1. the kindy food was rotten and we are all going to start dropping off or 2. it is time for the sleep club.

On those days that we don't do a mariachi dance while waiting for our turn on the one and only employee toilet we will adjourn to the large and spacious gym to take naps on the gymnastics mats. This usually gets me through the day. Even though the gym is quite large everyone tends to lay his or her mat three feet (one metre) away from the others and we all experience that comfortable warmth as we sleep and dream of work and lives far more challenging or legitimate than our own.

This bit of free time usually ends when, in an unsettling panic, we manage to sleep through the incorrectly set cell phone alarm and run about the school spottily grading old tests and quickly skimming through random homework assignments.

After the second class there is just one more hour of free time where I am able to drift into mindlessness as I wait for my last and most energetic class. If I'm not caught talking to someone on the top floor or grading more tests as my Chinese teacher gnarls at me while telling the children in Chinese what a clumsy and unprepared doofus I am, I will return to the low level computers that provide no leg room and the same small chair that fits any normal person's ass like a baseball bat.

I struggle to find booty comfort in the tiny and oddly grooved seat and I will attempt to read various newspapers and internet postings all the while wishing I could not have this middle free time that is not short enough to feel quick and not long enough to feel relaxing.

But we must remember that we don't get jobs for the free time that they promise and usually take away. We take jobs for the love of the work and the hope that it will lead to bigger and better jobs and also for the pay check that helps pay for that nice cushy chair which alleviates the pain accumulated from the "work" chair.

So in the hope that I might find better and more profitable things to do with my middle free time I ask for your, yes you oh weary and ghostly present reader, opinion and thoughts. Do tell or rather inform me and our other readers as to what you do with your little free time, middle free time, or long free time. Let us hear your stories be they long or short. Use some of your free time to tell me what you do in the rest of that free time. In the desire to change what you do you may start by taking the time to tell me what you do. How about it? Let's read....