No Day but Today...but hopefully tomorrow too...

When I went off to college, my best friends from high school told me

"Maybe give it a few days before you're...yourself...you know like...don't be all YOU until you give people a chance to...like you first..."

I had no friends for the first three months of college. Sage advice guys...

But for some reason, I took the same approach to starting my career in NYC. I left every audition feeling like I had morphed into some pansy-ass blonde schlep from Michigan who was just so gee-golly excited to be here in the Big Apple with so many talented people.

I remember staring at myself in the mirror (while belting out Disney's "Reflection" a la Aguleira) and HATING myself. There was no way I was going to continuously be beaten out by brunette punks with bad skin or some kid from a STATE SCHOOL. My life was NO joke.

and that's when I adopted my attitude taught to me by one of my favorite teachers and mentors

HIRE ME, OR F*CK YOU

Some of you might call it "confidence", but I call it

HIRE ME, OR F*CK YOU

and guess what, America? It started working

meaning I started working.

This was all well and fine until the day I was called into *GULP*

Telsey & Co.

Maybe this name doesn't send sheer terror shivering down your spine

but that's because you're NOBODY

and Telsey & Co. only deals with SOMEBODIES.

and I was becoming a SOMEBODY.

I knew that Telsey would crush my HIRE ME, OR F*CK YOU straight back to the NonEq tour of The Addams Family and I was panicking. I have no business playing Mark in RENT any more than Joey Fatone did and, unlike him, I surprisingly have no boy-band fame to fall back on.

At this point in panic, most actors would hire somebody for what we call a "coaching" to prepare for the audition. I, unfortunately, did not have $100 to give so that some NYU grad could ask me what my "objective" is...

32 bars and one sustained note does not an objective make.

So I just did what I normally do...put on my brightly colored hoodie, say something awkwardly charming, sing some music like a BALLER and mentally think the entire time

HIRE ME, OR F*CK YOU

and guess what America?

It worked. NO NO NO they didn't hire me, but they did ask to see me again...and with Telsey & Co. and $4 in my pocket, that feels like booking Broadway...

or at least the NonEq tour of American Idiot.

Hey Mom, I might be playing a character with AIDS! 

There are so many empty bottles of shame on my desk,

TJB: Making It