I Want To Read A Little Blog With You...

*DEJECTION!*

;_;

(you know a blog post is going to be good when it starts like that)

I just got back from checking out my first house in LA, after a long day of scheduling appointments and trying to jive industry professionals into giving me a job. One landlord told me she didn't want "a bunch of college boys" living in the house, even though I tried to explain we had graduated from a university in New York and were pursuing professional careers. Sigh.

And is it just me, or is this town really into the practice of, um, kicking people's shins out and then running over them with a car (generally something that costs $50,000 or above)? I'm getting this trippy vibe -- and correct me if you're not feeling it -- that everybody here *gasp* already hates you and hopes you either leave or die. Anyone? Just me? Yeah, maybe I'm bringing it on myself (I got that even in New York, from friends), but I get the distinct impression that Hollywood is built upon the bones of everyone the successful have cannibalized over eighty years of two-faced viciousness and heart-breaking. The good die young here... and the bad go work at Warner Brothers.

I kid, sort of. I'm not really mad at anyone in particular for anything in particular; just mostly miserable. This housing thing is fast becoming a fiasco. "I NEED PROOF OF INCOME TO LIVE SOMEWHERE? SERIOUSLY?" I just moved here from New York. Where the $*&%@ am I supposed to be getting income from? Oh, get a job? I see, yes, that's easy, considering California's unemployment rate is 10% or higher right now, and I only pulled into town last Thursday. And lest we forget, employers would prefer to know you're living somewhere solid before hiring you, lest you be a tramp on the street or hiding out in a parked car every night.

I guess I'm also twitched tonight because I sit on another dilemma regarding employment conditions: a source I thought may provide work for me has instead presented the interesting situation of doing some free promotion for his pet project, in exchange for a potentially rewarding meeting with a studio higher-up. Great, right? Well, not bad, except some of the underlying details involve hanging out some old IC faculty to dry.

Now, everybody knows how incredibly heartless I am (cough) and how much I loathe an awful lot of curriculum at Ithaca College, especially in the way of how film is taught. Entering the crossroads now (also) is how mildly abandoned I'm feeling after graduating and basically getting a Goodbye Boot from the school, without any sort of directive on how to USE my 40 zillion dollar degree to get work. Kinda like their work was finished after they handed it to me and finished taking my money. After talking up their alumni and networking, though, I came to expect a little more name-dropping and phone-linking than that.

So here lies my pickle (a grosser statement has never been uttered by me). Much as I hate a lot of what IC tells me, I also gosh darn love the place for all the other reasons, and I naturally prefer to discuss the good and omit the bad, when given the option to. In this instance, mentioning the bad and omitting the good is the point in order, and while Ithaca College hasn't done an awful lot to merit either my money OR my presence, I can't help but have developed a minute loyalty to it. So criticizing it exclusively is not only less than pleasant, but also shades my night with some sensations of guilt. Fry my alma mater like an egg, huh? Yeaaaaaaaah, we'll see...

"Oh Ithaca, my Ithaca..."