#BettyGoss

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT: OFF THE LEASH AND ON THE LOOSE AGAIN

Good morning, darlings,

That's me with Cardboard Dean Phillips. Human Dean Phillips was not available for this photo op. He's a busy man.

It’s really beautiful out today and I shall a-gardening go. Amy Farah Howler will be there too, tethered on her leash, basking in the sun as is her wont. I, however, chewed through the leash about a month and a half ago and I show little sign of staying in the yard or on the block. So today we write a little, we cook a little, we do a wee bit outside. Today, the weekend is on Wednesday.

So the Original Topic, if any, was that at first glance, it would appear that the entertainment programming for my cohort has largely disappeared, and where’s the fun in that? We can’t go on watching Golden Girls and Boston Legal forever, even though both have Betty White. My friend Renee in the ATL is busy completing a degree and working in broadcasting, but we also want to create a podcast together to address this content gap. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired behind my two non-lucrative showbiz injuries and went to a voiceover conference. There was food poisoning, comedy, and enlightenment, so from a strictly therapeutic POV it was 100% successful.

Then I got home and started taking action on new plans and I was just about THIS CLOSE to telling you about some strategic planning I’m developing for fun and fab content when BAM! The cat got sick, two weeks went by, and oh yes #SCOTUS, doncha know. That should bring us up to yesterday.

Meanwhile, back at the future: what on earth can MamaCat mean by strategic planning??

IKR? 🤣

For much of the past eleven or twelve years, the furthest out my strategic planning could reach was the next round of annual auditions. As an unknown, older woman actor seeking musical theatre employment, I’m really into a tiny little niche market. Really tiny little. My particular talents, look, voice, etc., are extendable to an extremely thin slice of pie, and there are certain roadblocks over which I as the actor have zero control. I can practice good outreach and work on my skills, but the entertainment world was not, in fact, running short of brassy character women when I returned, and it wasn’t as desperate for me as I’d hoped it would be. When I was young, the Industry told me I’d work when I was older, because I’m a character woman. I worked in radio and other things. I got older. I came a-knocking once again, but the Industry seemed to have a girl my type in every port already.

Much the same can be said of marketing myself for film and TV. As a certain very legit casting director in New York told me in class, he loved what I did with the scene, but it’s not a role for which a network will read an unknown talent. It’s the type of role written for established, iconic women actors of a certain age, for numerous reasons. I didn’t like the numerous reasons, but I get it. Let’s be honest, cats and kittens. Are the people gonna binge stream ten episodes of Diana Wilde? Or are they gonna binge Christine Baranski? There it is. On the other hand, in the Indy Prod world, you never know when someone’s going to need a Poor Man’s Kathy Bates at friendly reasonable prices. I don’t see it as impossible; I just recognize that there are parameters over which I do not have control.

As an original content creator, I control a lot more of that, because I’m setting the standards, writing the role for Me And Me Alone; I can’t help but fit the casting parameters if I’m doing the casting for the Diana Wilde role as interpreted by Diana Wilde. And as I have been researching the state of existing content for my demographic, along with research for upcoming travel, I have seen the future and it is me. I’m going to take you with me when I travel. I’m no Rick Steves, but I can promise you the fun I am able to find and the knowledge I am able to share.

There are many fine tour guides out there in YouTubeLand. There are many guides to singles hotspots and family activities. There are retired folks with cruise advice. And there’s a fine storyteller in Scotland I’ll be doing a fangirl tribute to soon, because Bruce rules. But there are bloody few sassy broads willing to act the fool when the opportunity presents. And I still can’t find the sassy broad who is helping the older, single, woman traveler who is not with a group and is walking the road less traveled, to find her own independent way, perhaps for a first time. The secret ingredient, the sassy broad with the hilarious improv skills and the penchant for talking to strangers…

That may be me.

I’m actually heading to LA in a few weeks for the first time in years, because I have waited a very long time to see myself in a screening at a film festival in actual Hollywood. It’s a small role, many of my best bits may never have seen the light of day in post, and I think we can all agree that I really don’t care – although I do hope some of the driving bits survive. There’s a real Galaxy Quest story here. I never gave up. I never surrendered. Let us take inspiration from one another. Sassy old broad takes long weekend on the Coast to admire her awesome badass self.

I haven’t heard from any of the other Minnesota actors involved, so I have no idea if anyone else is going, but at age 64 I am not going to blow off the chance to be in the room when this happens. It’s been more than a minute since I saw myself on the big screen at all, let alone in an iconic location among industry pros. And here comes a golden opportunity to interact with many brilliant people in the Indy film scene. You may be tired of my saying this after seven years and numerous plot twists, but I am STILL NOT throwing away my shot. Let there be networking, and perhaps a side visit to Santa Monica.

I see myself in Santa Monica, in fabulously upscale cotton gauze resort attire for which I did not pay retail, walking along the beach, and suddenly I start hearing the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” theme in my head. I’m pretty, pretty good with that.

Then in November, I’m attending another VO conference, this one in Washington, DC. The weekend after the election. I’m doing a lot of political volunteering in the meantime, so I fully expect to walk off the plane and directly into an episode of West Wing (but with updated costuming and everyone has a phone). It’s about six months after my first adventure to VOAtlanta, so I have some benchmarks & accomplishments I’d like to log in the meantime.

And then, in the autumn of 2023 [Good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise], HusbandCat and I have jolly plans in the works for our 15th wedding anniversary, in the U.K.! This is a very big deal for us, and we would both be grateful to the world and the politicians and the crazy people if they would please not destroy everything in the meantime, as we have worked really hard for many years and it’s time we took a legit vacation.

My personal shutdown started around Labor Day 2019, when I was released from my contract in New York and sent home with my torn gluteus medius, ending my musical theatre days for everything but park-n-bark, and breaking my heart completely. When our shared shutdown came in March 2020, my access to Worker’s Comp services was permanently interrupted, which ultimately left me shorter, heavier, and so discouraged there are no words. I thought I was at the end. Just… waiting. I worked for the Census, I picked up the odd contract job here and there, but I felt like a fat broken old lady without a clue, all direction gone. I even had to give away an entire wardrobe that will never fit again.

Compared to folks who cannot move or get out of bed, I am wealthy with obscene riches, that I can walk and talk. Compared to moving back to New York and forming our new household on the East Coast with lots of gigs and no pandemic, well, bummer. And, oh, yes, somewhere in there I dealt with a little bit of skin cancer, that was festive. It was a lot, y’all.

Then I randomly bought a ticket to a nourishing event and forced my inner Jason Nesmith to get back out in space and Peter Quincy Taggart the living daylights outta this.

And now, if you will excuse me, I am going to put on a whole lot of sunscreen and a large hat and go be one with the springtime.

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

MAMA CAT AND THE SUDDEN, AMAZING, COMPLETE LACK OF CONTENT

I swear, I thought I had the greatest start to the next post, and then everything went wonky. Good afternoon, darlings, so sorry to have been so very absent. I mean, look at this, what a great start I was off to! What with the optimism and the reflection and all:

MAMA CAT AND THE PAST THREE WEEKS

Good afternoon, darlings. Here I sit with one eye on the clock and one eye on the phone and delicious afternoon coffee, my second favorite coffee of the day. I think I figured out why I was so amazingly tired last night. About five minutes ago, I opened my calendar ap (as opposed to my sleek paper date book), and realized that it was only three weeks ago that I took off for VO Atlanta, partly as an act of professional curiosity, the desire to re-connect with an industry with which I have not participated in a while, the desire for a career reset in the wake of the worst of the pandemic.

I had seen two LinkedIn posts from people whose opinions I value, researched the event, asked myself why I’d never been to this thing before fer cryin’ out loud, and booked a flight. If you’ve been following along, you will be aware that, among other things: an unfortunate sandwich rained on my parade; I contributed the gift of singing improv to a breakout session whether or not that was strictly necessary; and although I missed all of the parties, I did gain great benefit from the sessions I attended, and managed to meet some great people in spite of eating mostly saltines all weekend.

I also did this partly as an act of sympathetic magick.

Don’t worry, we’re not about to go down some weird rabbit hole regarding comparative religions and religious devotions. But just as I still serve my blackeyed peas with collard greens every New Year’s to bring good fortune, I feel like maybe I cast a little bit of something like a spell with this trip. For behold, I was stuck like a truck in the muck, and now I have completed many action items on my list  

************************************************************************Look at that – without so much as a punctuation mark to show its completion. I hopped up to respond to something, be it door or pet or other – and then suddenly it’s been 40 days and 40 nights since Diana Went Down to Georgia. Where did nearly two more weeks slip away to, and how? I had all these exciting ideas to share and whatnot.

We had a great deal of veterinary excitement regarding lovely Domino and her thrilling, original ways of attracting attention to her feline dental needs. There was a bit of a row with the SCOTUS apparently poised to start erasing the rights of American citizens. And I had some profound trouble sleeping, which resulted in a great deal of writing to which you, dear reader, may or may not ever be treated. There were two letters written, one to a service provider, one to a business for which I as an individual had provided services.

MamaCat may have had a breakthrough.

Like I said, I was having trouble sleeping, a crazy unusual patch of it. I had also been having regular heartburn, like clockwork, no matter how gentle and bland my food choices. One morning around 1:30am, I was suddenly sitting bolt upright in bed, wide awake, and feeling like maybe I had eaten five chili dogs (I do not eat chili dogs). Like I had swallowed a basketball. Not like when I got food poisoning, in Atlanta; not like a stomach bug had gripped me; and no, I wasn’t having a cardiac anything. I was just, inexplicably STUFFED.

And I realized I had to write. Right now.

It was like I was stuffed full of Word Tacos and Rage Burritos. I had wanted to be very direct with the service provider (an individual, not a corporation) about why they wouldn’t be receiving my business anymore. I had also wanted to be very specific with the business, because there had been an ongoing dynamic which had more or less forced me out, and it required addressing. And every time I had tried to focus on either of these bits of unfinished business, I had found it far too daunting and blown it off.

I went downstairs to the studio, turned on RadioFreePhoenix, and I wrote for the next ten hours. S.F.D.s, second drafts, revisions, finished work. It was intense. Let us not overwork the symbology of my feeling stuffed, and let us not descend into conjuring images of the icky. Let us merely mention in passing that, yes, my digestion improved throughout the experience. I had not realized how incredibly hard I was working to stuff down my reactions and responses to the persons and incidents I was now addressing to the very best of my vocabulary and abilities.

Not gonna lie… when I read that back, it does sound a lot like Ralphie’s ecstatic daydreams about writing his Red Ryder BB gun essay and thereby thrilling the literary world, or at least his teacher.

Not gonna lie… accurate.

You know, I like to think I’m all cool and evolved and have all the answers sometimes. I know, that’s hilarious, but it’s fun when the feeling comes along. Like when those quiches came out so perfectly a while back, I was Queen of the World for a minute there. So I like to think that I can work out my process stories smoothly and effectively, and look good doing it, too! But these two issues had my body literally doing everything it could think of to tell me, no, no, you have tried to lay these issues aside unresolved, and this is not acceptable. Therefore you cannot rest until you deal. You’re going to feel weirdly stuffed and bloated until you deal. You’re going to eat Tums like M&Ms until you deal.

In both cases, the underlying dynamic was ageism, and ageist perspectives. I fired my massage therapist and walked out on an at-will contract because I was chased away by a combination of stereotyping, ageist language, Othering, unkind words, and all the other microagressions that grow in the culture of ageism like bacteria in a Petri dish. This dynamic was present in both cases -- one where I was paying for services, and one in which I was being paid for services rendered. Both cases involved finding myself treated differently, poorly, because of negative perceptions around what a 64-year-old woman can and cannot comprehend. In both settings, it was shown by word and by deed that those with whom I was interacting hold the preconceived notion that gray hair equates with diminished mental faculties. Both experiences contain humans who would tell you that this is not so, these things did not happen, and that the old lady is projecting (I know this, because it was said directly to my face, but with far less direct language).

Both situations found me walking away, because I can replace both the massage therapy services and the revenue stream.

But my physical body rebelled when I thought that I could ghost either party. That’s when the weirdness started, and I didn’t even associate the bothersome symptoms with my unexpressed truths at first. It took time for me to realize I was feeling so rotten at all, let alone what the symptoms were and where they may have come from. They came on slowly, so a person would just think, well, I’m getting old, stuff like this is gonna happen…

See what I did there, cats & kittens?

Ageist within, heal thyself. 🤣🤣🤣

I slept eleven hours last night and woke up naturally at about 5:45am. I felt refreshed for the first time in a couple of weeks. And if you’re still with me, then get this and get it good: It’s not just an older woman resolving her anger issues with her ageism encounters. It’s anytime a problem with the way you were treated, when you realize that you should have advocated for yourself and didn’t, when you were treated as Less Than and you allowed it to be; when something like this has kept you up or made you nauseous or brought on a headache or distracted you while driving. It’s like the feeling you get when you find out that there are nine unelected monarchs of America, the majority of them seemingly ready to un-do any unenumerated Rights which may be inherent under the 4th and/or 14th Amendments.

It's the absolute necessity to realize you’re in a midterm election year, and that you absolutely must advocate for yourself and your liberty now. Liberty which strips rights and creates second-class citizenship and denies bodily autonomy is not liberty at all. The freedom to be chattel, the freedom to be closeted, the freedom to be underground and hidden away… those are not freedoms. Check your voter registration. Volunteer for candidates who make sense. Be a part of the solution.

So that’s where the better part of two weeks went between that super start to my regular posting, and today’s update. MamaCat promises to be a better correspondent. We were really cooking for a minute there and I’d love to keep up the momentum.

Oh, also, I’m going to Hollywood in six weeks because I have a film coming out.

Did I forget to mention that?

Old people. Honestly. 😎🎭🛫🥂🎉

Meow, darlings.

[kittywildegrrl]

Somewhere in Studio City. #Hollywood #StudioCity #actorslife #actorsonaplane #DancesWithFilms2022 #TheHarbinger #BettyGoss #GrannyHasALife #GrannyHasAResume 😎🎭🎬☀️👏💖