Yipster

I make my living doing television commercials. This is a terrific way to make a living and I feel very fortunate. It’s nice work if you can get it and sometimes I get it and sometimes I get it less. Last week at an audition, I was paired with another woman, meaning we were going to go in together, slate (which means say your name into the camera) and then do the dialogue and action we’d been given. We had two groups ahead of us which meant five-ish minutes to chat and wait.  When I introduced myself to the girl I got a weird vibe. I know a lot of the women I see at the auditions, at least by sight, we are all usually in the same category (quirky) and are relatively old friends. Some of us have worked together and at this point (late 20s edging in on “young mom” territory) we are pros and can congratulate each other on the jobs we didn’t book because they did.  This person I was paired with was new to me and very nice but weird, there was something weird going on. She was nervous, which is unusual (see above, we’ve been kicking around for a while) and telling a lot of anecdotes about college. An old friend of mine from my own university days was at the same casting office and come over to say hi and this woman stammered and blushed and said, “oh! I know you from iO, I see you all the time!” And then it hit me: she was very young. I’m not saying I’m not excited about improvisational comedy, or running into people I’ve seen perform or auditioning, because I am, those things are (still) exciting, but I saw in her reaction to my friend, that this was still new.

“Did you just finish school?” I asked. 

“No, I finished in May 2010” she said. I told her that was just finishing. She said, “Maybe if you graduated a long time ago.”  So I proudly told her I was class of 2005. 

“Oh my god!” she said, “you look good, girl!”

I was completely taken aback.  I blurted, “Yeah, I’m 28”, which meant, 28 looks good. That’s not…old…yet. That’s just the beginning of age spots and avowals to never get fillers (definitely not if you are quirky and make your living slinging modestly-aspirational goods). But then, just as I realized that she was young and that she thought 28 was old and I looked younger than that and therefore she thought she was complimenting me; I realized I do the same thing to people. I’ve done it to men and women, because being an actor (even a commercial, off-center actor) means a constant, tedious, evaluation and objectification of the way you look no matter your gender or conventional attractiveness. This is the way it is and that’s fine when you’re working and harder when you aren’t. That’s when you start tinkering with bang-length and audition clothes and self-loathing. I have said, so many times, “Oh wow, you look great!” when someone whispers, “I’m 36.” ”I know the old joke that you tell people you’re 5 years older than you are so everyone tells you how young you look. That is an old joke, right? But if you’re being honest…

I know people like to hear they don’t look their age, but I also know that people don’t like to hear that their age isn’t worth looking like.

I hope we both book it. She was sweet.

—Bridget 

I believe in a hot toddy, I’m not sure if it’s the honey and lemon (nature’s antibiotics, “nature’s antibiotics”) or the bourbon. (I think it’s the bourbon.) But I’m tee-totaling this week (not pregnant, just trying to lose 4 pounds) so when I started to feel sniffly tonight I made my go-to-alterna-toddy. One can find various versions of ginger, lemon, honey tea on the Internet, but I consider mine the perfect amalgamation.

This makes one spicy, virgin toddy, but is very easily multiplied. 

You need: water, fresh ginger (1 inch piece, grated, or if that’s too tedious, chopped finely), 1/2 lemon, honey, cayenne. 

Simmer 1 cup water with the ginger for 15 minutes

Juice the lemon into a mug, add one tablespoon honey and (a scant) 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (or more to taste)

Pour the ginger water through a strainer into the mug

Hope that your immune system notices. 

—Bridget 

Last night I complimented a friend on the way she smelled. “What are you wearing?” I asked. She told me it was a scent from a company not known for fine perfume, imagine something like “Love Etc” from The Body Shop. I was surprised. She added she also had something “nice” she wore on special occasions but couldn’t remember the name. It was Narcisco Rodriguez, but I only knew that because I’d seen it in her bathroom. Not that I was snooping but she smelled so good and not placeable so I had taken a very cursory peek. “The thing is” she said, “I’ve worn this for almost 15 years and I can’t let it go”. I shared my similair story. “I guess the hope is” she said, “that you run into someone and they smell you and it all comes rushing back.” 

“That’s happend to me!” I said, “at a wedding, granted it was with a girl I hadn’t seen in ten years and wasn’t particularly invested in any of her memories rushing back. But she had hugged me and then said, “Oh my god, you smell exactly the same”” and I felt pleased, proud even. I am the same. Except I’m not.  

What is the hope? We run into an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend and s/he curses his stupidity at letting our sillage leave his life?

I have, with some notable interruptions (Iroaz, Eau D’Hadrien, Love in White and now, Ofresia) worn the same perfume for 14.5 years. That perfume is Tiare by Chantecaille. Having a signature scent was of the utmost importance to me. Starting in the fall of ninth grade when I obtained a sample of the perfume while visiting my sister in New York, I was possessive and serious about the way I smelled. My identity was very neatly wrapped up in glass bottle and could be liberally applied. 

But, sometimes you want a change. Sometimes you get bored. Besides, change is constant! Inevitable! And perfumes get REFORMULATED.  First, Tiare disappeared and no one could tell me if it was ever coming back and so I realized that I needed to have some other choices, this was the perfect opportunity to branch out. I wore Iroaz when I got married and the smell brings me back our engagement, wedding day and honeymoon—wonderful memories (the flop sweat generated by seating charts and hemorrhaging money is not detectable).

I sprayed around. And then Tiare came back, in a new bottle and new formula. My parents’ gave it to me for my birthday, I celebrated, I spritzed, I sniffed…and it was almost the same.  But I had been bitten. I had been unfatihful and now I wanted to know what else was out there.

Right now, I usually smell like Ofresia. I’m learning that you can smell different every day, an idea I’ve never subscribed too. How will people recognize you in ten years? By sight?!

My sister was in town for the holidays and starting spraying herself with my Tiare. I almost fainted. To smell how I smelled for years on someone else…there was cognitive dissonance. But I didn’t rush to spritz myself with my old pal. I stayed with my newish scent. Things change. 

-Bridget, who, historically, has been proprietary about perfume.

I cannot stop refreshing for my horoscope. 

Happy almost New Year.

Bridget

I found the Old Love tumblr via A Cup of Jo. Although some of the photos are poignant and others thrilling for past style choices, what struck me most was a particular pose. It seems like recognizable hetereosexual couples being formally photographed are encouraged to gaze wistfully at one partner, or off camera, while the other looks directly into camera. Usually, there’s a gender breakdown: the woman gazes at her man and her man gazes into the camera. MEDIA STUDIES ALERT. I have theories.  

In France, everyone looks off camera. Some, more wistfully than others.

—Bridget

Our neighborhood has sidewalks. The houses are close together and there are no noteworthy inclines. It is a prime trick-or-treating neighborhood, which means it is also a prime soliciting neighborhood. We get everyone: religious people (mostly Jevhovah’s Witnesses), carpet cleaners, magazine and peanut brittle peddling teenagers, vaguely Christian coloring books—you know, the usual. We always politely decline. Actually, once, my husband gave someone 5 dollars for college—or something. I made a snide (but inaudible to the young woman at the door) comment about student loans. My husband has a tendency to assume the best of strangers and I assume they are casing the joint. I admire his generosity of spirit at the same time I prepare to imply we own a firearm. (We don’t.) (But if you are planning on home invading us, we do.) 

I have gone door-to-door once. It was during the 2004 Presidential election. I was in college in Evanston, Illinois and my friends and I signed up with MoveOn.org to go knock on doors on election day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was initially assigned the job of making sure registered democrats were able to vote. I was carrying a MoveOn.org sign and wearing a pin.  Even though it didn’t say a candidate’s name, and I was carrying the sign facing my body, my presence in the elementary school auditorium where the polls were set up created a terrifying “electioneering” mini-scandal that lasted about 6 minutes. I was sweating. I wished I had taken AP Government. As I went outside to call headquarters a man from the Kerry campaign followed me to make sure I wasn’t being silenced unfairly. As we were talking about what had happened he said, “Whoa, are you Katy Moloney’s sister?” (I am) It turns out that one of the lawyers for the campaign was my sister’s junior prom date. This was amazing because we are from Los Angeles and neither of us lived in Wisconsin and this man had not seen me since I was 11. Of all the polling places in all the world… 

I was re-assigned to knocking on doors with my roommate.  We offered people rides to the polling place, we encouraged them to vote. Then we turned in our signs, went to Chipotle and drove back to Illinois.  Everyone who answered the door was perfectly nice.  Even the people who weren’t that nice were nice enough.  No one told us to get off their property.  

But I will. I don’t want people knocking on my door. I just don’t. Unless they have the lettuce cups I ordered.  I am thinking about a discreet sign.  A little “no soliciting please” sign.  But that seems so crotchety.  So stingy. I can’t even be bothered to tell someone to stop bothering me?  Next I will be insisting on a gate.  I would love a gate. 

I will cross the street, or forgo a trip to Trader Joe’s to avoid solicitors and I donate to the Human Rights Campaign! I support the cause but please, no, don’t talk to me.  Let me buy my pre-cooked lentils.  So when I am home, safely enjoying the internet, my spouse, our dog, the television, it is too much to ask.  I’m sorry.  I don’t have the room in my heart. Whatever it is you’re asking for is too much, didn’t you see the sign?

-Bridget