Acting Cool in NYC?

Hey guys, I'm gonna be going out of town to visit my girlfriend in New York in a few hours, so I probably won't be able to update while I'm there. Unless I do. I mean, I might. I wouldn't put it past me. I am sure, though, that I'll have interesting adventures while I'm there, so even if I don't post them while I'm gone, I will when I get back. Thanks for reading!

The Bit Part Blues - Part 3 - The Gig

Here's a picture of toast and me just before we left his apartment (I'm the one on the left, by the way):

C took this. 

And here's another:

C took this after W hit him in the balls.

So, Toast and I arrived at The Pig N' Whistle, where we met up with Zach, who had brought his girlfriend, Caley. Jon came soon after with his girlfriend whom I met only briefly, so her name escapes me. We musicians had to pay a five dollar cover, but I didn't have anything, so I asked toast to spot me. I'm pretty sure I bought him a burrito a week previous, anyway.

It turns out, this blues jam was more of an individual musician thing; they didn't typically get bands coming in to play. They put us on the list anyway and said they'd see what they could do to allow us to play together. Fortunately, we were first to sign up. However, before we could go on, a house band took the stage and played. For an hour and a half. That may not seem too bad, but you have to remember, we were sitting there, waiting to play our first show ever. Jon had never performed as a guitarist, and I'd never performed as a musician. Agni had never done a show. High tension and indefinite waiting do not a comfortable combination make. Toast went out the back door and started smoking with some guy he'd just met, who made the astute observation,

"Yeah, they should definitely let you guys go on as a band. I mean, you're the only ones who brought girls." My step dad, Mark, had come to watch us, as well, which I appreciated. Personally, I couldn't sit still. I paced all over the place. I kept going out the back door, walking around the parking lot, walking back into the bar, doing pull ups without tiring myself out too much, chatting nervously with Caley and Mark. I wanted to hit some drums, and this band on stage was really starting to piss me off. Their drummer was pretty impressive, though. In fact, the whole band was really tight. Just... Not that exciting, I thought. Apparently, they'd been at this for three years, so that all made sense.

Finally, finally, after all the covers and guest musicians and the break and whatever, the announcer said,

"Up first... We have a band...!" It sounded like he was going for a question, but decided to make it a statement at the last second. By this point, I was too relieved to bother being that nervous, though nerves were still a thing. They never stopped being a thing, you know.

I sat down at the drum kit, which belonged to some guy I didn't know, and got ready to play. I put his Vic Firth sticks to the side, pulling out my Regal Tip 5Bs instead. It was a solid kit, though. He had K Custom cymbals, which are really pretty damn nice, and the drums themselves were a classic jazz kit. Pearl, if memory serves. The most striking difference from mine, though, was the fact that this had only one tom drum and one crash cymbal. That meant I'd have to crash on the ride to get any variety out of my cymbals, and my fills wouldn't really have anywhere to go while on the drums. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just nod your head, it's okay.

Soon enough, Zach made an awkward introduction, and we went right into One Way Out by the Allman Brothers Band. This song is fast, but we'd practiced it plenty, so I was able to keep up, except there was one moment when I decided I could fit two crashes some place where I really couldn't. I quickly got back on track, though, and we kept going right through it. That's the thing about performing; you don't have time to mourn your mistakes, you just roll right through them. I was surprised by how little such a big mistake bothered me, honestly. It was exhilarating. We were finally playing live for a room full of people. Made my heart sing, it did.

Soon enough, the song was over, but they let us do another, so we went into Hendrix's Voodoo Chile. In this song, I ride on the crash cymbal, which means that it's loud. Sure enough, a minute in, one of the guys running the show leaned forward and made the "quiet" gesture, which involves pointing downward and wagging your hand. To be fair, I was really wailing on the drums, so I figured that maybe he was afraid I'd break the cymbal. I switched to hitting the ride, which wasn't as impressive-sounding, but I kept up the volume on the rest of my drums. A half minute later, he stepped out in front of us and made the same gesture to me, frantically this time. He seemed angry. I got the message and played more quietly, trying not to let it throw me off.

Towards the end of the song, Zach put the guitar behind his head, got on his knees, and pulled off a flawless solo. The guy is really impressive like that, he practices stage antics all the time. Soon, though, it was over. Zach said... something... I grabbed my sticks, my bandmates unplugged, and we left the stage. On my way out, I approached the sound guy.

"Hey, sorry about that, man," I said. "I don't know how to play quietly."

"Yeah, I can tell," he snipped. He turned away from me and started fiddling with some knobs on the sound board, making it clear that the conversation was over. I made a sound halfway between a cough and a chuckle and walked over to Mark. He'd been shouting like a soccer hooligan the whole time we were on stage, and had also captured it on video on his ipod. Unfortunately, the high volume in the room didn't work too well with its built-in microphone, we were soon to learn.

"You guys rocked," he said. "I mean, those other guys were good and tight and whatever, but you? You rocked." That's one of the things I really like about Mark. He's never afraid to show his enthusiasm. We left soon after and gave Toast a ride back to his apartment.

And that's the story of how, as Jon puts it, we "popped my cherry." Frankly, it was pretty amazing.

The Bit Part Blues - Part 2

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The Bit Part Blues - Part 1

This has been a pretty busy week.

I suppose I'll start after the beginning. Tuesday, I took a bus the two miles up to Hollywood so I could go to an audition for work as an extra. I'd found the casting call on Craigslist, so I didn't really know what to expect, except that it would probably be a bottom-of-the-barrel kind of a thing. Anyway, when I got there, I knew I was in the right place, 'cause I saw a crowd of people loitering around outside the room, staring at sheets of paper and mumbling to themselves. It's always easy to pick out a crowd of actors outside an audition, since they typically disperse widely enough to make conversation between them unlikely, so they can focus on memorizing lines. I walked in the room and signed in with the receptionist, who was slightly less orange than a carrot. I think she actually compared herself to Snooki at some point while I was there. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi, I'm here for the Craigslist posting...?"

"Oh, yeah, okay, just sign in here and take this sheet of lines, I'll call you when it's your turn."

"Okay, thanks."

It was totally humorless. I was a little disappointed in myself, frankly.

I stepped out into the hallway and joined the other actors memorizing lines, as much as one can join a loose smattering of people, all of whom are keeping to themselves. I like to pace when I memorize, but I didn't have much room to do that without invading another person's space, so I settled for rocking from one foot to the other.

It didn't take me long to realize that all of these lines were completely boring. They were so boring, I couldn't even come up with a particularly interesting way of reinterpreting them. Really, they were kind of a masterpiece of dullness. I decided my character was a completely uninteresting man in his early 30s who liked only the most inane of activities.

"Last Sunday, we had a barbecue," I mumbled. "It was great. Kids playing frisbee, dogs barking, franks on the fire..." Well, I guess that's not so bad, I thought. I mean, a little cliche, but we don't have to assume this was the typical, white picket fence cook out. "A couple Sundays back, I had some pals over, we had a couple beers." Why Sunday? What's so special about Sunday? And why's your life so boring that you have to talk about the time you invited your friends over for drinks three weeks ago? "The wife wants me home by ten, since I got back so late last Sunday." The wife. Sunday.

This was when I realized that my character was a terrible person.

After two hours of being a diligent actor and reading my lines over and over, the receptionist called my name. I met with a very sweet lady who looked at my resume and, thank God, understood that I was interested in building a career, rather than just dicking around, wanting to be on TV. We spoke a little bit, I read my lines to her, and she told me to come back another day and drop off my headshot, so she could start referring me to casting directors. That idea was actually pretty exciting to me. Then, it was over, and I left. Just in time for band practice!

Recording

Seeing as I just finished recording a song with my band this evening, now seems to be a golden opportunity to show off how incredibly cool I am. Jon and Zach went to the studio directly from my place so they could start setting up the equipment while Toast and I made a stop at Cactus Taqueria en route. For those of you who don't know Cactus, you should. It's one of those fantastic hole-in-the-wall burrito stands that somehow serves the best Mexican food to be had in LA. Toast must've smoked four cigarettes between when we left my place and when we arrived at the studio. When I asked him what the green band around his cigarettes meant, he said that he smoked menthols. I guess I made a face at that, because he then went on to explain that he didn't used to like them, but his friends all did blah blah blah. I guess you're wondering who this mysterious "Toast" person is. His real name is Artisan Toast Bourgeoisie, and he's Agni's bassist. Here's a picture of him as a baby:

Anyway, we got there, and Toast started helping Jon and Zach set up. I sat down in the hallway and started eating my burrito; drummer's gotta eat, you know? Soon enough, I convinced Toast to join me, so we sat there, in the hallway, eating burritos. We were kind of in the way, but you aren't allowed to eat inside the studios, so whatever. After we ate, I helped Jon set up the drums, then the drum mics, then set levels, and then two hours had passed. That's the thing about recording; we had the studio for four hours to record a three minute song, and we still ended up going over time.

For a drummer, setting levels is rather tedious. The studio tech has you hit one drum on your kit "as loud as you'll play it" until he's got the decibel level for that drum just right. Then it's on to the next one. You usually end up feeling like they've forgotten about you, so you stop playing, but soon enough, you hear, "No, no, keep playing." Also, "as loud as you'll play it" is pretty damn loud, and that can be tiring for your arms. Half an hour later, the mic levels are perfect, your arms feel like they're gonna fall off, and you haven't even done the first take yet. Maybe it was all the heavy burrito meat diverting blood to my stomach, but I struggled initially, this session.

When you do start recording, it can be pretty disorienting, if you're used to playing in the same room as your band. I guess the crummy isolation headphones played a part in that, too. I could barely make out my bandmates' instruments over the roar of my crash cymbals. In the end, I had Zach, who was doubling as our studio tech, crank up the click track all the way, and I let the other instruments come through as background noise. I entered a sort of trance-like state. The click track was my life line. Even turned all the way up, I could only hear the beep boop boop boop as faint pops in my ears, but that was enough. After I got over my initial discomfort and sense of alienation from my bandmates (who were in another room, in case that wasn't clear) the session began to flow pretty smoothly. We got 10-15 takes. My hip joint burned from pumping the high hat so much, but my sense of satisfaction was palpable. You could palpate it. Seriously.

We made quick work of striking all the equipment while we joked around and made fun of each other, saying things like, "Hey dude, have you ever put Bengay on your balls? You should try it, man," or, "I broke my pinky when I saved a burning baby from a building and then fought a bear, all while rollerblading. Er, I mean, a baby from a burning building." Toast said the second one. He has a crooked pinky.

Then it came time to leave. We bid each other our farewells and headed to our respective homes. All in all, it was a long but rewarding day. I was gonna upload a video I took of us sitting around while Zach made some last-minute adjustments before we started recording, but the file's corrupted or something. Oh well. I guess you'll have to wait a bit before you can see our pretty faces.

Also, wow, so much for not writing about the band in this blog.

Self-Presentation

So, I suppose marketing is going to be a big theme in this blog. It's only after I went through the harrowing process of choosing my blog name and setting it in stone that I realized just how spot on its title really is. "Acting Cool in LA." That's about how you present yourself. It's about who you claim to be, just which face you put forward and how you make it look pretty. Really, that's why I'm writing this blog in the first place. I'm an actor, a writer, and a musician, and everyone I speak to tells me that I need to market myself. I need to establish some sort of online presence, not to peddle any wares, but to peddle me. Maybe that's what this blog is. Maybe this is an infomercial selling Henry Kober.

Odds are you can already tell, but I'm kind of cynical about the whole idea. That's why it took me so long to start. On the other hand, I have no interest in fading into debt and obscurity before I start any sort of career at all. Thus, blog.

I probably ought to tell you a bit about myself and my life. My name is Henry Kober, and I'm a native Los Angelino. I'm the drummer for a band called Agni (named after the Hindu god of fire), and even though we've been together for over a year now, we've never played a single gig. We recently added a new guy, Jon, and he plays back up guitar. Our other members are Toast, the bassist, and Zach, the lead guitarist/singer. I'm going to start a blog about our band and its exploits elsewhere. You can find a link to it in the links section. Is there a links section? There'd better be a links section.

I'm a writer, too. I love writing. It's great. That's what I studied in college until I left due to ennui and general discontentment about not really doing anything aside from homework. I initially went to school to study electrical and computer engineering, but I learned after two and a half semesters that my brain just doesn't quite work like an engineer's. I do love me some programming, though. I'll talk more about leaving school later.

I'm an actor! I know, I know, an actor in Los Angeles. No surprise. I think that's one of the reasons I didn't study acting in college; it seemed like too much of a cliche. Now, though, I'm over that, and I'm going to build a career doing what I love, which most certainly includes plying this particular trade. 

Finally, I'm a meditator. This is a pretty big part of my life, too, and it's something that I'd like to teach, at some point.

So, I guess this is what a blog is, huh? An opportunity for me to throw out snippets of my personality to the internet like a message in a bottle? Interesting. I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would.