More Harvest Mooning, Ponies, and Childhood Trauma Or: More Train of Thought Derailments

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I wrote my original Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns review after having played for a little over one in-game year. The other day, I completed to main objective of the game around the halfway point of in-game-year 2. I completed the main objective -making the mayors of the two towns friends again, and opening the three sections of the caved-in tunnel- without having gotten married, expanded my farm or have had a child -tasks that are generally linked to the main objective in other HM games. So after having essentially "beaten the game" without completing the other life tasks within the game, it felt almost anti-climactic, and I felt sort of melancholy about it. I still really enjoy the game, and in reality, the game doesn't really have to end per se -it ends when you just decide to quit playing. In fact, so far the game is easier to continue playing now that the cave underneath the mountain is open, and there are still plenty of mini-objectives. But, now I'm torn between my enjoyment of playing the game on my own terms -making objectives for myself- and the nagging feeling that the major point of the game is completed, so why keep toiling away because the game may never actually end? Maybe I'm just cranky-pants emo today.
I blame the ponies.

The other night, Boyfriend and I went to see War Horse at the Lincoln Center. Boyfriend has been wanting to see it since they announced it was coming to Broadway from the West-End. I too wanted to see it, especially after it won so many Tony Awards last year. However, I was very hesitant to see it because I have sworn off animal movies/stories in recent years. War Horse dissolved me into a puddle of mess. It was beautiful and an amazing piece of art. It touched me very deeply the way few theatre pieces do anymore. I have always felt a special kinship with animals and nature, as well as a love of the performing arts, and have always been (what some consider overly sensitive) empathetic to other's pain. Especially animals' pain. You name a movie where an animal or anthropomorphized part of nature is distraught, I will burst into tears. Sobbing, torrential tears. (You know, the "ugly crying" kind.) This is a fact. Ask anyone who has ever watched a movie with me that has an animal in any part of it. I am a mess, not just immediately afterwards, but sometimes for weeks after. I can't shake the funk, the heartbreak, the feelings. Even if there is a happy/uplifting ending, I remember the emotions as a whole and carry them with me indefinitely.

No puppet will ever make you cry as hard as this one.
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My therapist tells me that strong emotional triggers affect me so deeply because it simply means that I'm a nurturing and passionate individual, hence the reason for my sometimes-crippling emotions. My mom probably thinks it's because she didn't take us to church enough when we were young and so that damaged me somehow. My dad probably wonders if he didn't hug me enough.  I think I'm just a little bit crazy, but one thing my parents will probably agree on is one incident in particular where this phenomenon seems to have spawned. My parents probably blame the Ninja Turtles. I think they have a misinterpretation of the situation and may not have asked the right questions at the time, but it's no one's fault really. It just is. The wiring in my brain works differently than most, and since diagnosing mental illness in children in the 80's was not really a thing, it was easy to blame outside sources for my peculiar behavior. So, here's the tale that has been an endless source of embarrassment for me when my parents bring it up:

I was five-going-on-six. I was obsessed with TMNT. I watched the cartoons all the time, I dressed up like them, I ran around the house pretending to be a ninja, and I was totally in love with Raphael -the king of attitude and snark. When The Movie came out in theaters, I was just shy of turning six years old and I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. My dad finally lamented and agreed to take me to see it. Now, my mom sheltered us pretty thoroughly when it came to violence, etc. TMNT cartoons of the 80's and 90's were probably the most violent thing I was allowed to watch.

Waaaay too violent for my innocent little mind.
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Seriously, there were lots of things "banned from TV" in our home. I could do an entire blog post on TV shows I was not allowed to watch and toys I was not allowed to play with, but I won't...yet. Instead, I will simply say my mom sheltered me and my sister more than most of our friends.  (Words like "crap," "butt," "fart," and "suck" were considered salty language in our household.) And maybe mom was right, maybe we couldn't handle anything darker than cartoons at the time, but there was nothing like trial by fire to test that, then, eh? So dad took me to see TMNT on the big screen.


In case you never saw it, or don't remember the live action movie, it was a lot grittier and darker than the cartoon (and yes, someone out there will argue that the original comic is darker and the 80's cartoon is watered down for kids, and blah blah blah -I am not denying this, but that's neither here-nor-there in relation to this story. My story.)
So, with the darker grittier live-action movie, I got a little perturbed. Shredder was real scary-looking angry man, not a silly cartoon with a scratchy voice like Uncle Phil. Splinter was kind of a grody-looking sewer rat, not a furry smiling cartoon. And the turtles were "real" and angsty in my soon-to-be-six year old eyes, not quite as toony and light-hearted. The movie had breathed life into these imaginary characters I loved to watch on TV in the safety of my home. The joy and awe this produced in child-me at first was indescribable, but then things got ugly. In the movie, Raphael is being a punk (as one does) and goes outside in a huff, but then is ambushed by the foot clan. Raph essentially gets the shit kicked out of him by the bad guys. Then he's in a coma in a bathtub for like 3 days! I will repeat this: my favorite turtle, the on-screen-puppeteered-interpretation of the animated being whom I credit with teaching me the basics of snark and sarcasm GOES INTO A COMA FOR 3 DAYS!!! I was six. Now, I was not a worldly child, but I was well-aware that being unconscious in a bathtub is not a good thing. Even for a turtle.

Sewer good.  Bathtub bad.
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 Short-story-long: it kind of fucked me up for a bit. I'd never experienced any real tragedy in my life up to that point. It made something snap in my wee brain. It suddenly occurred to me that the good guys don't always win. Bad shit does happen. And sometimes it happens close to home. These were very scary realizations to a rather sheltered child. Talk about your violent reality check for a child who already had undiagnosed mental health issues. To this day, I have almost PTSD-like symptoms when it comes to the idea of losing consciousness. I fainted once in my life (a story worthy of a post, I assure you -funny in retrospect) but I have an almost-paranoid fear of doing so again. And I absolutely panic if someone is unconscious near me. I've witnessed car accidents, watched a stranger breathe their last breath, been in morgues, and attended open-casket wakes, but none of these give me nightmares more than the 4 times someone has had a seizure/fainted next to me and lost consciousness. I go numb, completely numb with panic. It's a paralyzing fear, the kind that holds your heart in its icy claw, fills your chest with a red hot terror, and makes your lips tingle.
Wow. My therapist has her hands full.


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After the I got home from seeing the TMNT movie, I started acting "really weird" for several weeks (according to my parents.) They were apparently very concerned for me, but I honestly don't remember much of this. I remember being very distraught by my sudden realizations that the world was a lot darker than I had originally known it to be, and I felt quite numb and confused. What if Raph really was lying somewhere comatose in a bathtub? What little I do remember of those following weeks, I can say that knowing what I do now, I was exhibiting signs of some minor psychic trauma (again, not something that was really diagnosed in those days for children who were not subject to regular abuse.) Am I saying that my dad should not have taken me to the movie? No. The trauma, I don't think came from the movie. I was confused about how I was feeling, and didn't know how to express it.  But because of this, I think my parents became exasperated and didn't know what to do and I may have mis-read this and felt shame about my feelings. So I did what any burgeoning performer would do. I buried those little bastard feelings until I either needed them again, or until they festered into a poison-filled dangerous powder keg and I exploded. (But, I'm not afraid of exploding anymore, though because my tears will save me.)


So, War Horse was amazing and touching and beautiful, and the 90's may have partially scarred me for life, but what does this have to do with Harvest Moon? Honestly? I haven't a fucking clue. This post sort of ran away from me.
Welcome aboard my train of thought, if you wanna get off, remember to tuck and roll.


Dear God.



The Sometimes-Not-So-Glamorous Process of Film-Making: or Time to Hyperventilate? (UPDATED: Now With Edits)

UPDATE: Ok, I read up a little more and this post is now just another example of my anxiety-ridden crazy brain going into panic mode.  What do I usually do when that happens? I either hyperventilate and curl up into the fetal position and cry, or I write it all down and I just sound like a crazy person. You're welcome. I'm going to go take my meds now. Also, www.playbillsvspayingbills.com is the best website ever for actors.
 
Over the weekend, you may or may not have seen my tweets from the set of White Liars. Saturday was a shooting day of epic-ness. It was the longest day of filming I've ever done outside, but we couldn't have asked for better weather. The skies were ominous early in the morn with some left-over rain clouds from the night before, but by the time I was called to the set at 10AM, the skies were clear and blue and the sun was shining for the rest of the day.  Beautiful.

Film-making is filled with a lot of "hurry up and wait" moments.  Hurry up and get to the set at your call time, then wait until they're ready to shoot your scene. Hurry up and get into position, then wait for all of the elements to fall into place: wait for sound, wait for the camera to record, wait for the director, hold for sound - there's a motorcycle, hold for sound - there's an airplane, stop, cut - some dumbass pedestrians walked into the shot. Reset - get pack into position, try again. It was about 14 hours of that.

Not that I'm complaining, but after Saturday, I completely understand why professional productions with a larger budget than ours have so many people on a crew. Our writer/director/editor/sound op/production coordinator/P.A/actor(s) are all the same people; in an independent production funded by donations and shoe strings we all have to wear many hats. Either because of, or in spite of all of this, I love TV/film production. I love the energy of the set, I love being able to laugh about the ridiculousness that comes from filming on the streets of NYC (I now understand why Hollywood uses back lots all the time.) I just get a rush from being a part of a large creative endeavor, even if my creativity has to be in stop-and-go mode all day. There's something just bohemian and fun about suddenly losing your sound guy because he has to fly to Houston for a last-minute paying job in 3 hours and then everyone turns to you and says, "Congrats, you're the new boom operator/sound engineer for the rest of this shoot. Here's your headphones." And I was a damn fine sound op, if I do say so myself.  I may have found a new calling talent.

What are these jokers doing in our shot? Don't they know we're filming a low-budget web series here?!

 On another note, I want to thank everyone who donated to the White Liars Kickstarter campaign! The production is now funded and is also SAG-AFTRA approved, which means that those in the cast who are already members of the union will get paid and not be in danger of losing their membership for appearing in a non-union production. Plus, that also means that those of us who are currently non-union can very very soon be eligible to join SAG-AFTRA also. I am freaking out about this a little bit. I got the e-mail this morning about needing to send our producer my "particulars" so he can submit the Taft Hartley papers. I'm excited and scared and hopeful all in one! It's really scary when a piece of your dream starts to fall into place, but it also means you'll make a major life choice. 

I am under no obligation to become SAG-AFTRA eligible at this time, but how can I turn it down? Once you are eligible, you have a 30-day period to accept as many union jobs as you can, and then you either must join the union officially if I want to work another union job or not.  If you choose not to join, you will have to start over again working towards union-eligibility (in my case, years.)  
Apparently I know not what I say because the SAG website info is crap. Now I know better.
If you choose to join, you will have to pay the union dues and any additional fees (upwards of $2300) which at this juncture is a fee I cannot afford to pay in a lump sum. 

Maybe my landlord just won't notice that I don't pay rent for 3 months due to union dues...

SAG-AFTRA has a credit union where you can get a loan and pay your dues in increments which is awesome, but I have shit credit thanks thanks to medical bills and credit card charges I racked up just trying to eat and pay rent during the 8 months I was unemployed in the year everything went to hell-or 2008, as it is known to some people.  
So right now, I'm feeling a little bit like the universe is taunting me, or has issued me a passive-aggressive ultimatum on pursuing my dream. I know it really is never too late to go for your dream, look at the wonderful Kathryn Joosten, who lost her battle with lung cancer recently.  She had a full and active acting career which didn't start until she was 42 (something almost unheard of in the youth-obsessed culture of Hollywood) but she was recognizable both in face and voice usually as, "Oh hey, it's that lady." Plus she won 2 Emmys! Or look at Jane Lynch.  She's been a working actor for years, but was not very well-known until The 40-Year-Old Virgin, when she was in her 40's. So, it's never too late. But I still feel like if I were to pass on this opportunity to join the union now, I would regret it. I'm also not assuming that I'm going to be famous just by joining the union.  In fact I would rather not be a celebrity.  I just want to work at something I love and get paid enough to pay my bills. That is the "American Dream" isn't it?

What's NOT standing in my way? 
-Emotional support from those who love/care about me
-My drive/yearning for this to happen
-My talent
-My love of the industry

What IS standing in my way?
-Fear
-Money (or lack thereof)
-More fear  
-Insecurity


Welcome to my existential inner conflict that plagues my mind.
I guess I just gotta pull on my big-girl panties and power through.





You see what I did there, right? Yeah.

Not Really a Post, or My Train of Thought Has Violently Derailed

I'm sitting at work my desk pondering about unicorns (as I am known to do.) I was just wondering, What ever happened to Charlie the Unicorn?  I love him. Why did he go away?




This guy gets it.

Mari Kasurinen gets it. (And if you haven't seen her amazing My Little Pony sculptures, get out from under your rock!)

And this post did have a point, but I forgot to make it somewhere. So...um...Oh look, a unicorn on my boobs!

 (This has been a lesson in randomness and pandering to the crowd.)


In all seriousness, though: why ARE there so many song about rainbows?


These are a few of my favorite things.




P.S. I may be high.


*This message brought to you by Clonazepam.