Misery Needs Company!

Flirtatious: Hey, can I help you set those lights mister?"

Real Mood: Cuddly

Prediction:  Someone in Hollywood will not get the part they wanted today.

When a long time photographer friend of mine (Coby Howell) sees his name in one of my entries he writes, "SO that's how it feels to be famous?"

My own instinctive internalized response was, "well, maybe not famous."  Afterall he could just check the number of visitors and then quickly tinker with his ego gauge.

But my learned and trained response is, "Well Duh?"

Truth is fame, success, respect, competence, experience, love, devotion, passion, honors and paychecks are life long pursuits. And in the broad (yet narrow) world of journalism, media, entertainment, there are some uncomfortable givens. All those neat things like fame are attainable. But they are not a constant. They are not your's to own.

No one steals them from you.  They just  get eaten up by time and circumstance.

"Well, that's kinda depressing," you say.

Not really! What would be depressing would be not knowing that was the case. To get there is a lot of work and guess what? To stay there is a lot of work.  

Let's get the monster cliche out of the way.  "You Must Believe In Yourself." 

"Well, yeah, but...sometimes that ain't so easy?"

Okay if you're under 18 close your eyes here.

"Sometimes you gotta fake it!"

I'm telling you all this because I host a "net group" of graduated and graduating students just getting into "The Biz." On the surface and collectively this has been a great year for them. They've gone from knowing ME to successes from Coast to Coast. They are on stage, in movies, on the news, in the edit booth, producing radio and TV shows, setting up network live shots, doing standup comedy, writing, reporting for major newspapers and magazines, hosting web music shows, singing their own material on stage and on CDs.

I often hear from those who don't have any stars to put on their resumes this year. They feel a little embarrassed that they haven't broken the pole vault record in 2005. Luckily they have Me as a friend.  "So What?" 

I think it may be comforting to them to know I also heard from all my friends who did break the pole vault record this year and THEY, too,  were a little down at times.

Here's a case. My friend Tasha Orr has been out banging on doors in L.A. hoping to inch her way into the producing world. She's been in a Movie, worked for the Director's Guild, been to the beach, had a date with a Soap Opera ego, met a lot of people. She's now working for a Prop Company that supplies military stuff to major productions like Monk. Tasha just showed  up in LA  LA land a year ago. But she thinks she is not as far along as she SHOULD be.

I'd like to believe that all good advice comes from ME. Alas, that's not the case. Tasha's mom, bless her heart, says, "Tasha, quit making up SHOULDS."

Let's hug Tasha.

Lyndsay Goranson has been in New York for a year and let's see? Two movies, one voice over psa for MERC, two off- broadway plays, one of them a major role? All this while holding down a P.R. job for a major designer.  She is worried she's not making her full time living in this "BIZ" yet.

Be aggressively patient Lyndsay (wouldn't freud love that). Here's a hug.

Tierza Scaccia and Matt Daren have knocked down enough credits this year they may have to start ducking to hide from paparazzi.

Still they've both written for and received hugs.

Tom Livingston just recently went to work in Wyoming thinking he might be too old to go the standard route to becoming a major market anchor.  Well since arriving he's been on a cattle drive, been to the bottom of a missle silo and spent some time with a few "famous" people. He's smiling.

He wrote for and got a hug.

My Pal Mindy MacInnes moved to New York, and after banging her head on concrete walls for a year,  moved into ABC headquarters where she arranges affilate liveshots for the network. She is learning that reporters and anchors don't always put their pants on like the rest of us.  Sometimes they put their pants, and their heads, on backwards. While hugging we've gotten in some pretty good laughs.

Same goes for my buddy Paula Vargas, now assignment editor at a local TV station. She thinks I'm a lot easier to talk to now that we can share common experiences. She got a hug, along with a few tips on how to handle some egos that haven't been hugged lately.

I was chatting with one of my current announcing students, Natasha. We didn't discuss her age, but she was wondering if she hadn't missed her window of opportunity to start an on-camera carreer. I replied with my stock sermon.

"I was 29 when I first got into radio. I was 42 when I got into TV and I retired from that business....and....."

"Stop, stop!," she says.  "You've just made my day!"

Sometimes you don't even know when you are hugging somebody.

Whoever you are hang in there.  And feel hugged.