Alice: She's a dry wit

I was at the grocery store with nine-year-old Alice today, using one of those self-serve checkout machines, and growing increasingly frustrated by the minute. I had just a couple of minutes to go before it was time to get Lucy at school, and the thing kept malfunctioning as I tried to swipe my final item.

UNEXPECTED ITEM ON BAGGING TABLE, it told me. Again and again. I finally gave up and turned toward one of the regular lines, but they were too long--I didn't want to be late for Lucy. So we moved to the station to the right of the one that failed us.

Before I rang up the first item, it gave me the same error message. The table was empty. But Alice was standing right by it and I realized it was detecting her presence.

"They must have thought I was trying to steal forty-five pounds of meat," I told her.

Without missing a beat, she replied: "In some places, child meat is considered a delicacy. People eat it fried."

Well played, my little sicko daughter. Well played.

A Wee Update from Hollywood

We're back in Los Angeles to play another round of Let's Audition for Something and See How It Goes. And as bad as everyone says rejection is, I am here to tell you that Tinseltown has nothing on the playground. Seriously. So far, school has been more soul-crushing than the vast entertainment machine, which says something about the bravery of everyday kids.

That said, I have had one wild dream dashed. Adam* told me the laundromat across the street would wash and fold our dirty goods for a dollar. A DOLLAR? I thought. SIGN ME UP. I planned to pretend that I didn't feel terrible for the poor stranger who had to wash my unmentionables.

When I dropped off the laundry, they immediately weighed it. That's never a good sign. Seriously. Who deals with scales? Medical examiners, circus sideshow acts, butchers: all menacing in their own ways.

The laundry people wrote up my bill and added a dollar on top--so there was a dollar involved, even though it was a dollar involved with many others of its kind. Enough that they could swiftly people a commune were they actually people.

But anyway. We have clean clothes.

Yesterday was a day full of errands. In addition to having other people do my laundry, I also filled out paperwork. By myself. Because no one will do that, not even for a dollar. I also bought a cheap vacuum cleaner because the apartment we are living in belongs to a bachelor and let's just say the one he has is lacking in the suck department. Or it's abundant. Either way, it does not work.

Then I had to pick up the girls' headshots and drop them off at the agent's. And then pick up my clean, folded laundry. This sounds like nothing, but when you have to drive across Los Angeles several times in one day, facing traffic, helmet-less bikers, and police offers going 15 miles under the speed limit for no apparent reason, which is strangely alarming, you realize it's an ordeal.

The moment we stepped in the apartment, sweating profusely into the next round of laundry, I got an email from Alice's agent, letting us know she has an audition for a movie role as a frighteningly smart 8-year-old going on 18. So basically, as herself. If she were to get the role, she'd travel to Southeast Asia for filming. Whoa!

There was just one problem. She was in Seattle for orchestra camp. I called Alice to see what she wanted to do, and we agreed that the movie audition was a cool opportunity. Then I tracked down Adam, who found Alice a ticket, and put her on a plane that arrived just before midnight. I picked her up at LAX, threw her into bed, and we have been rehearsing her lines since the girls woke up too early this morning.

Lucy, who as usual is being a good sport about not winning the audition lottery, has been coaching Alice on the emotions she needs to show for this audition: fear and misery. Let's just say Lucy believes in method acting, and Alice has had to call a couple of timeouts. 

But we're in for an exciting day. The floor and most of our clothes are clean. Whatever happens, we're having fun. I couldn't ask for much more than that. (Except for the dogs and Adam to be here with us.)

* His real name, for maximum humiliation.

Hollywood: The end, for now

Our Hollywood adventures came to an exciting end. In the last week, Alice got two callbacks and food poisoning--and not necessarily in that order. 

I'll spare you the gory details of the food poisoning, but I will say this. The Flintstones BBQ at Universal Studios is at the bottom of my list of recommended dining establishments.

Despite not feeling her usual elfin best, Alice was a champ during her two callbacks. In the end, she didn't get the part. But, as I explained to her and Lucy, the point of this wasn't to get parts. It was to do something new, something challenging, and something we loved. With this or with anything in life, you can't control what happens. You can only control the risks you take and the energy you spend trying.

On both of those scores, the two girls not only made me proud, they inspired me. Alice had more luck on the audition front than Lucy, but Lucy was nothing but excited for her little sister. Alice, meanwhile, had the casting assistants complimenting her independence. 

"She doesn't need me!" one of them said as Alice made her own way back to the Abbott & Costello building on the NBC lot after her final callback.

This callback experience, by the way, provided me with one of my favorite Hollywood snapshots. While I waited in the lobby for Alice to do her thing, they were casting a male model for some mysterious production. I was surrounded by handsome young men in well-ironed trousers. They were talking amongst themselves about their bartending jobs and their girlfriends ("mine is a bad, bad girl") when the casting director gathered them 'round for instructions:  

"Conrad, Zachary, Schuyler, you're male strippers. I want you to walk past me and give me your best condescending look--just look at me like I'm lower than low. I'm lower than you, and you're strippers, so I'm really low." 

One by one, these improbably named, deadly handsome men walked past. As they turned toward her to deliver their condescending gazes, I realized I'd seen that look before in high school, in college, around town. I'd never known what it meant before, even though I knew certain people made me feel really uncomfortable. 

It was so nice to know the reason for that--if I'd had dollar bills on me, I would have folded them and delivered one each to Conrad, Zachary, and Schuyler. 

Meanwhile, though, it's great to be home. And three cheers to Lucy and Alice for being brave, for working hard, and for being happy just to have a chance to pursue a dream. It's so easy for us grownups to hang our prospects for happiness on the outcome. I'll forever be proud of these kids for knowing it's the experience that matters.