Central Casting is a museum of humanity, with the most delightful assortment of specimen aspiring to be “found” by someone in the biz. It’s encouraging to them that the process is so relatively painless. As long as you have your ID and $25 in cash, it seems that nothing can or will stand in your way to becoming a star. And with looks like these, it’s only a matter of time.
So you convince yourself that there’s a life to be had waiting in line for a job only a few people may hold. Reality takes hold quickly. But at least it’s worth a few bucks. My goal in registering as an extra is not for the hope, but the experience of being an extra. I have to remember my place, else it all becomes a muddled dream from which there is no awakening. I want to remember what it’s like being in the middle class. I want to always have a middle class mindset. It’s the middle class that provides the impetus for our country’s future success. We are its engine, its beating heart, its motivation. We drive the economy, the political decisions, and the real estate market. We supply small businesses their income. We start the small businesses. We give the most to charity. We open the doors for our kids to become greater than ourselves in every way. The middle class is the ruling class, despite our subservience to a high class envy. To coin a phrase, we are the world. We are the people.
Who wants limos and celebrity status and money and power? The real power truly does lie below the ties and $500 Florsheims. To forget all that is not just foolish, it is an abdication of the throne.
Where was I?
Middle class. Non-union extra work. Casting lines. Right.
There’s a reason they call it casting. Before the idea of movies and entertainment, people did few things, and most of what they did was required to survive. Hunting; farming; fishing. These things are survival tools. And the very act of striding into the wilderness, whether with a musket or a net or a plow, is a casting of your bread upon the water, so to speak. It’s speculative work. Casting is surely the same in principle. You show up, hope to get chosen from a nearly limitless supply of applicants, and then the next day you begin again, as if you’d never done it the day before. Each day’s work is its own reward or failure, depending on a number of factors like luck, good looks, and talent. The hard work sometimes reaps a great reward. But only sometimes, and only sometimes for a very few people.
So, registering with Central Casting to be a non-union extra is humbling. I highly recommend doing it the next time you’re in Los Angeles. It’ll remind you of why you rule. You humble kings and queens of the United States of America. I salute you.
Every Wednesday, the left side of our street is swept by a great automated monster at 8:30 in the morning. The next morning, the other side of the street is similarly cleaned. It seems to be one of many great services offered by the city (for a few pence of your hard-earned money), along with garbage and recycling pickup, meter checking, and the ubiquitous graffiti that livens the city into a bustling centre of urban artwork and social messaging.
What’s that? Graffiti isn’t a city service? It’s free? All the better. Never mind the source.
Garbage and recycling, I understand. I appreciate it, even if I don’t happen to have the need for garbage pickup (we have a trash chute in our building). Just across the street is a house with their city-provided trash and recycle containers out every week, faithfully, no doubt filled to the brim with Tecata bottles and shredded taco and burrito wrappings. They need the garbage service, just like we all need water and sewage (another great city service!).
Everyone knows my policy on meters, so I won’t revisit that issue.
But street sweeping? What is this? Who needs their streets swept and dusted and misted? It’s a street, not a hotel room. I can understand wanting to keep down the trash and rid the streets of the constant detritus of our passing. But honestly, this street sweeping business is like sweeping the moon of dust every two years. One, it’s a losing battle. Two, it has exactly the same effect. Walk down any street of any city, and you will find the following:
cigarette butts
candy wrappers
broken glass
rubber gaskets
washers
gum
leaves
weeds
small rocks
dirt
newspaper
plastic bags
paper bags
magazine advertisments
plastic ties
string
wire
styrofoam
pastry wraps
coffee lids/cups
popsicle sticks
straws
napkins
used matches
pen heads
broken pencils
metal shavings
pennies
soot
oil slicks
And that’s just a small list. If street sweeping was effective, wouldn’t we have streets free of such things? Yet this afternoon, I noticed all of those items on the street that was swept this morning. Perhaps we’d have streets overflowing with flotsam and jetsam if the street sweepers weren’t out in force, you say. Perhaps, I allow. It just strikes me as a perverse method for keeping down the mess. I mean, when you sweep a house, where do you sweep to? A dustbin or outdoors. We sweep inside stuff outside. It goes from somewhere to a different place. Whereas street sweeping consists of removing dust and trash from one part of the street to another part. It’s like asking the kid to clean their room, and they shove it all into the closet. Sure, it makes the room look nice, until you open the closet door. It strikes me as rather Beckett-esque of the city to offer a service that consists of a moebius strip of uselessness. And for all that, we have to move our cars every Wednesday and Thursday night.
Some service.
My solution: Street vaccuumers. Custom fitted with a powerful suction device, these trucks would roam the city, up and down city blocks, like vacuuming a rug, pulling in all the particulates that collect on the shag of our streets.
I think Spaceballs: The Movie had the right idea with the ship that transforms into a giant space maid. Naturally, our urban vacuumers would be used for the good of the city. No oxygen sucking, that would be the rule. These vacuum trucks should be sent to a city that would really put their vacuum motors to the test; a city where you can’t walk without stepping in the worst of humanity’s trinkets and trash.
I suggest Las Vegas.