I’m at the airport getting ready to fly up to the GDC in San Francisco.  I’ve gone in the past to work with or for Dave Taylor but this is only my second time going to market myself as a voice over actor.  I don’t know of anyone else who does this but I feel like it’s such a no-brainer.  I mean, that’s where the people that make games go.  And my agent gets me a lot of video game auditions but I figure it would be even better for them to connect a face to the voice.

I’m especially excited to go this time for a few reasons:

1. I’m staying with Hal Bergman at his new place which is so much better than a hotel

2. The last time I went people asked me if I’d been in anything they’d recognize lately, if I was SAG, and if I had a demo.  I answered no to all three yet, this year I was the Barroness in GI Joe, I’m SAG and I just finished my animation demo last week.

3. Dave’s (succulently juicy story to tell about him later) producing a wicked party tomorrow night that has every indication of being epic and I, being his roommate, am on the guest list.

4. Justin Lassen is going to be there and I haven’t seen him in AGES.  I’m going to try to convince him to hang out when we get back cuz my studio is all set up and we can jam.  He’s so fun to do that with and we both use ACID Pro for recording and editing which is convenient.  I’m sure he knows how to use most editing software.  Anyway, jamming with him is like better than crack!  Er, I imagine.

Oops, plane is boarding, must post.  If you’re up there, DM me on Twitter

My dear friend took me out for a lovely meal at the new restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, Drago Centro.  Before I went I had time to peak at a review and so I knew I needed to swank it up a bit.  I pieced together a simple black dress and black heels with a flower belt I made and a rather bold necklace of my grandmother’s.

The food was crazy good. I’d go into details but the review already does that better than I ever could. Anyway I do recommend it if you ever go and have the extra money to spend.

Shame on me.  This happened on Tuesday and, here I am not getting it down until Friday.  I don’t really know if anyone cares about when and how I write stuff but this topic felt worthy anyway.

The day before I was to report to the studio, I was told I needed to have my crap in good standing with SAG.  I’ve taken a few SAG jobs in the past but never joined for many reasons, the biggest of which was that the initiation fee was up to nearly $2400.  Screw that - the job only pays $1600!  But after you take two SAG jobs you become classified as a “must-join” and cannot accept another job until you’ve paid your initiation and dues.

I was told that if they are contacted by the production company saying that they want to hire me, I would be “station 12′d” and qualify for a payment plan.  So I called SAG but they had no record of anyone Station 12ing me.  And yet, my agent called saying the casting people tried to Station 12 me but it came up that I’m not in good standing with the union so I need to have it taken care of!!  What the hell?!

So, the evening before the job my agent calls the producer at Electronic Arts and finds out it’s an AFTRA job.  Sweet.  I’ve done tons of AFTRA jobs and just needed to pay my dues that were like $50 bucks.  So the night before I went from thinking that I had to pay $2400 to finding out that I only had to pay around $50=)

The session time was at 9am and I wanted to have plenty of time to wake up so I was out the door by 8am.  I walked through my new hood down to the Panini Garden for a cup of coffee.  Four dollars for that small mocha and I could not choke down one sip.  It was nasty.  I took the lid off and it actually looked a lot like mud.  Water, coffee grinds and scalded milk - gross.  And it must’ve been over 180 degrees….blech.  I was so irritated about the idea of wasting that money and throwing it away a minute later.  I tried to feel out the vibe of the guy behind the counter and well, he felt reeeeal crabby.  I could tell right away he wasn’t about to make me another.  Without taking one more sip I threw it in the garbage.

Not ten minutes later I walked in the door of POP Sound.  Two gorgeous, 15 pound female receptionists whisked around the counter and came to my side.

“Can I get you anything?  Coffee, water, fresh squeezed juice or any espresso drink?”

and then the other one chimed in,

“Would you like some breakfast?  Help yourself to anything in the kitchen here.”  I peeked in the kitchen and was all of a sudden so happy I didn’t have anything before I came.  The first girl went to work on my mocha while I made myself a toasted bagel with lox and cream cheese and fresh tomato.  Then I saw the fruit bowl.  Is that not magnificent?!

Man oh man was I happy, especially once I had a yummy mocha in my hand to boot. I finished my breakfast while they got ready for me and then was shown to the studio where I’d be recording.

The session was great and my character, the Baroness, is a super fun and deliciously sexy, yet evil character. The best news of all was when they said they’d scheduled too much work to do for the session and that we’d need to schedule another. Holla!