Christopher Ming's Blog

Displayed on his laptop was the Facebook photo of someone I barely recognized. His was a good-old boy face, with clean features and a fresh haircut. He carried himself with forced-casual posture — shoulders back and spine slightly hunched — and it screamed American Eagle catalog.

Teddy and Kathy laughed at his modeling photos as they passed the bowl back and forth, him clicking and changing the picture every other toke. Teddy gestured towards the screen. “Look at what Ky’s been up to.”

Ky was a server who started working at the Thai restaurant just before I left. We didn’t talk much: I remember he seemed real country, real green. He mentioned getting into acting and modeling. I could barely place his face on the Photoshopped Malibu Ken in front of me, who went through a wardrobe change and pose shift with every mouse click, the only ubiquitous feature the plastic smile on his face:

Here he is, wrapped in a scarf!

Now, flexing his abdominal muscles!

Wow! It looks like Ky’s ready for a night on the town! Let’s go, Barbie!

They laughed and pointed and laughed some more, half in good-nature, and the other half, not so quite. “Hey, I mean, good luck to him,” Kathy said.

“Yeah, hope he gets something out of these pictures,” Teddy added. Like these dismissive platitudes negated their ridicule, or concealed the resentment laced twixt every laugh, every comment, every puff of smoke exhaled in Ky direction.

I remember doing the exact same thing, once upon a time, while visiting my friends Jenny Beth and Danielle, in Nashville. Late one night and bored, we started flipping through the 30-pictures-deep Facebook modeling album of a former CTY co-worker. He proudly posted a short prelude, explaining that he never considered modeling, but a friend suggested it and he “loved the results.”

The “results” were far more over the top than Ky’s photos, and included super-mega-bonus suggestive captions, like “wanna get nailed?” as if wearing cut-off jean shorts, an open flannel shirt, and a firm grip on the shaft of a hammer wasn’t suggestive enough. Or if clutching a toy jack hammer directly in front of your crotch didn’t slap you across the face with a laundry list of double entendre, one was provided for ease of reference (“I’d hammer you, too.”) We laughed and we pointed and we laughed, until we went through the entire album, trying out each caption in our own sexy voice.

Half in good nature. Half not so quite.

This time around with Ky’s photos, it wasn’t as amusing. I walked out of the room, and the click of the mouse and more laughter followed me into the hallway. Their gaiety hit too close to home. It was a low blow, making the subject of their ridicule someone who was getting started in entertainment. Be certain that anytime you attempt something difficult, something without a proven record, people are lining up their bets against you and laughing as they do it. Rare are the people who wish you the best of luck, and mean it.

Which is helpful, in its own way. Ridicule weeds out those without the gumption to stick it out for the long run. If you can’t handle some razzing at stage one, it’s unlikely you’ll have the staying power to last the seasons, when ridicule melts to begrudging acceptance, and eventually, blooms to admiration.

Still. “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle.”

Categories: headshots, ridicule
by Chris
Tagged: headshots, Los Angeles, values
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There’s a crazy homeless lady yelling obscenities outside my window. I hate callously tossing around words like “crazy” and “homeless”– that could be someone’s grandmother outside – but she’s got a schizophrenic gait to her speech, see-sawing from sing-song to Banshee. That’s the “crazy.” And she parked her shopping cart of worldly possessions next to my car, and is using the rear end bumper as a roof. That’s “homeless.”

Teddy suggests we get out there and tell her to move, but he doesn’t read horror scripts all day, so he doesn’t know any better. There’s always that guy in slasher flicks who approaches the seemingly vulnerable creature, disguised as an old lady or the ubiquitous little girl (equally ubiquitously played by Chloe Grace Moretz.) His hand is outstretched, like he’s about to pet a baby bird. He’s hunched over, his eyebrows furrowed, and in your head you’re screaming “No! Don’t do it! It’s a trick! She’s going to bite your face off!” but he inches closer and closer, unconcerned with your pleas because you don’t possess telepathy and he is inside a television.

He gently touches the old lady, and…

Nothing happens. He smiles…

Right before she rips his face in half.

I will not be this guy.

The alternative to asking the crazy homeless lady to move is realizing that she may be obnoxious, but she’s not doing nobody harm. We should just stay inside our warm, safe apartment, with running water and electricity and cell phones, counting our blessings.

Then get on the cell phone and call the police, and ask them to move the crazy homeless lady.

I prefer this option, though I’m not sure what good it’d do. In Los Angeles, there’s this “live and let live” attitude towards the homeless and panhandlers that still escapes me. There’s a panhandler I regularly pass, stationed right where the “10” empties onto National Blvd. Her scraggly brown hair is tied back in a ponytail, and tucked into her USC sweat shirt. Every time I get gas or groceries, she’s working that corner, though her specific duties vary. Sometimes she’s got her cup in hand, walking down the long line of cars waiting for the light. Other times, she’s flirting with the homeless wheelchair guy, or drinking a 40 out of a brown paper bag.

Yesterday, I saw her at Starbucks, ordering a Frappuccino. It was half-off, part of the Happy Hour special they were running, but still.

Across our apartment, a woman parks her van loaded with cans and bottles she’s collected inside an outdoor garage. Like others, she makes her living hunting recyclables. I never gave it any thought until I overheard her conversation with another professional recycler.  “People look down at me,” he said, “but shit, I ain’t working for no man. I make my own money, and I make my own hours.”

He’s not a recyclables hunter; he’s an entrepreneur.

And what one might refer to it as panhandling, others call hustling.

In upstate New York, you throw an empty bottle on the ground, it’s littering. In Los Angeles, you know it’s going to get picked up: so you call it charity.

In many American cities, employing someone at no pay to keep the coffee machine going and fetching printouts is called slave labor. Here it’s an internship.

If that’s not spin, then I don’t know what is. It permeates from every crevice of our lives, a byproduct of being concerned with how others perceive you. Spin is everywhere and it’s still spreading, bleeding over Ethernet cables and wireless routers, diffusing from our real lives to our online lives and back again. There’s merit in developing the ability to spin, especially when it’s your Facebook or blog account that notifies others of your engagement, your job promotion, or what you ate for lunch.  It’s more fun (and easier on the ego) to spin a post about triumphing over adversity, versus admitting this recent slump of failures has got you frustrated and rapidly losing faith. And why admit you got your heartbroken when a simple “In a relationship with…” toggle box explains it all, and the only thing left to do is untag your former significant other out of your life?

Spin grants us a glossy veneer to cover blemishes. With a click, any defeat can be turned to victory, any failure, a success.  “Be all you can be,” has given way to “be all you’re perceived to be.” This power comes with the very real possibility of losing sight of who we actually are and what we actually feel. Until one day we find ourselves out on the street, babbling schizophrenics all, torn somewhere between our real lives and digital selves.

Categories: crazy lady, spin
by Chris
Tagged: internships, Los Angeles, values
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Allan soured his face as I explained his duties as the bus driver for today: keep your phone on. Answer the calls. Make sure you’re constantly looping back here from LAX — don’t just stay at the airport.

He had this “I-can’t-believe-my-lot-in-life-is-driving-a-bus” expression on his face. The sentiment seeped into his posture, and into his surly one-word responses to my instructions. He maintained that presence the entire day, up till the moment I signed his parents, indicating services rendered, and that he completed his duties.

After I shook his hand, he paused, then said, “Handshakes and thank you’s are nice, but that’s not why I do this job.”
I smiled and blinked, in that confused way we do when we don’t understand someone and hope they’ll go away if we stay cheerful and silent. He placed the form I just signed back in front of me, and pointed out the highlighted section about “gratuities not being included in the fee.” And he repeated himself:

“Handshakes and thanks you’s are nice, but that’s not why I do this job.”

Ah. He was, very not so subtly, asking for a tip.

I looked to my boss, Charlie. He had the very same smile plastered to his face. “I need you to tell me exactly what you need.” He blinked repeatedly.

Allan gestured to the paper. “Would you go to a restaurant, eat, and just pay the bill? Is that how you treat your waiters?”

Charlie explained to him, as nicely as he could muster, that we didn’t tip the drivers, and this was something he was going to have to work out with his company. Allan snatched his papers and stalked off, calling in heavenly reinforcement with a “God bless,” reminding us not tipping bus drivers wasn’t the Christian thing to do, before he disappeared out the door. I’ve never seen him since.

Despite knowing Allan was a troubled man working on his own issues, the whole experience left me feeling dirty. Well, not dirty exactly, but worse — cheap. I lived and worked in this community for a few months and had completely removed myself from the service industry for the first time in more than a decade. I surrounded myself with a constant stream of people whom I could tell, based on how they conducted themselves, saw these men and women in the service industry as beneath them. Did that influence or contact high or whatever you want to call it put me out of touch with my own humility?

Humility — how you view your importance to this world — is the quality I value above all virtues and attributes. It’s difficult to teach, and more difficult to fake, as it shapes your every interaction with others. At the same time it’s a quality closely tied to one’s resiliency; it toughens you up to do the hard work when your other resources: money, time, intelligence are scarce. And precisely because I value my humility so greatly, it strikes a nerve when Allan’s response challenges it.

Maybe Allan’s correct, and it’s proper etiquette to tip these drivers; just because we set the precedent of not doing it doesn’t mean we were right in the past. Navigating the rules and ethics of tipping is a treacherous path, though — put out a tip jar in front where something gets sold and money changes hands and we ask, “Oh, am I supposed to tip?”

Everyone knows they should tip their servers, though percentage points are often points of contention. Some tip bartenders extra generously, and others tip them the same way they tip strippers: a dollar per round, more depending on the square inch of cleavage shown. What about the baristas at our coffee shops? The furniture movers? Cab drivers and delivery boys? Sushi chefs? Camp counselors? Bell  hops and door men? Who do we tip and how much?

It sounds like an over analysis, but I don’t see it that way, because I am, and everything I achieve is, a byproduct of this system. In eleven years, I’ve made my living on both the overwhelming generosity and bitter stinginess of others. Every person whose food I served or dish I cleared, has microscopically yet very definitely had a hand in shaping who I am, and I am blessed. I am grateful. Not because of some glamorous lifestyle, or because I have so many great things, or because of any significant achievement: I am blessed to be at a station in life where I can make those things happen for me, if I work for it. Because of those people who tipped, I’m in position to earn it.

That’s the idea behind tipping, isn’t it? That no one’s entitled to it, no matter your life’s station or  your job title. No one’s entitled to the extra, even if you work in a profession where “a minimum 18 percent gratuity is charged for parties of 6 or more” or if it’s the kind of place where you put out a tip jar. We are not entitled to the tip. The same way we’re not entitled to the promotion because we’ve been with the company for x number of years, or the paying gig because we interned for three months and got really good at fetching coffee. We’re not entitled to any of it.

Everything we want, we must earn.

Categories: hustle, restaurants, tipping
by Chris
Tagged: hustling, serving, values
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“MODERN FAMILY: there’s a show I feel like I was born to write,” my friend said to me. “It’s like, I can anticipate every. Single. Joke. Before they get to the punch line, I already see the set-up and I know the payoff.”

Makes me think of watching cage fights, with George St. Pierre or Miguel Torres in the ring, and I’m  anticipating the shovel punches and the fist-elbow combo thrown, and when his opponent’s going to shoot or if it’s a deke! and instead follows up with a kick, and I know he does this by avoiding deceits flowing from the hands the eyes the head. Instead, he locks on the hips like Master, and that’s how he anticipates every. Single. Punch.

But recognizing technique while reclined in the barcalounger is not the same as stepping into the ring with 155 pounds of War. And calling out a punch line isn’t the same as writing one.

Recognizing and anticipating puts your skill level a hair above those who blindly consume, and hardly an iota closer to someone who creates.  Recognition is a tool in a poor man’s arsenal; safety scissors amidst scalpels. Before assuming you’ve got the chops for story, ask yourself: can you talk about which parts of the story work (and which don’t?) Can you break it down for people, step-by-step, moving through the story with a clear head and clear vision and clear words as to why this piece fits better over here than over there? Can you see past the words to spot the structure? Why is a show like Modern Family funny? Why does a bit work, not just on the funny haha level, but that deep, resonate in my gut level? Can you break down why some stories feel like discovering a soul mate and others just the cheap fulfillment of a one-night stand?

That’s ARTICULATION.

Go another level, past articulation, down to limbo, and you’ve discovered where real work happens. No liberties here, no staring at the near completed puzzle and saying, “of course the pay-off happens here, where else would it go?”  You’ve CTRL+N’ed yourself to a document so bleak and white it’d give Edith Wharton a symbolic hard-on. Now, CREATE.

That’s the real work.

Yes, story be story. Anyone with years of books beneath their belts and movies behind their eyeballs gots a sense of what that is. Everyone’s got their inkling of the aesthetically pleasing. I look at Starry Night, I’m hit with the vague understanding of its appeal and allure. It doesn’t bring me half a step closer to investing in a Crayola 24-pack and hacking off an ear, though.

Consume. Recognize. Articulate. Create. In that order.

Fortitude and study, that’s what it’s going to take to learn the mechanics, to get a grasp on the science and move from one level to the next. Fortitude and study reveals the magic, and what is magic but some misdirection mixed with sleight of hand, built on a science foundation? Prepare to invest your time if you’re going to articulate rather than recognize, and create rather than articulate. No room for skeptics, neither. No time for rants on “my artistry, hear me roar! unbound by the boundaries of your box, by the man, by rules or convention!” Because art isn’t the doing away of structure, but its understanding: why it works and where it’s limited. Scrapping what fails and retooling the rest.

So where you going to get educated on your reversals, your turning points, your inciting incidents? How you going to study up on three-act structures and the placement of set-ups and payoffs?

By taking classes. Reading screenwriting books and treating the good ones like Testament. By listening to others talk about screenwriting, piping the knowledge of others directly into your brain every chance you get. By reading scripts: piles and piles, spanning across genre and generation.

And most importantly, by wringing out your brain every chance you get, putting pen to page and shedding stories. Even when you don’t think you’re ready. Even if you don’t think this story is ready to be shared.

So that when you find the story you were born to tell… you can.

Categories: story telling, study
by Chris
Tagged: entertainment business, hollywood, writing
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“My catchall, general advice to everyone who moves out to Los Angeles is this: if there’s anything else you can do, anything else that’s your calling, go do that instead. It’s a pat answer,” he admitted, “but this is just too hard…”

Which immediately raises the question: why is it hard? Because people will be mean to you? Because the hours stretch long and your social life sums to nil? Because you’ll be overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated – conditions your mother conditioned you into believing you’d skip right over because you were a unique snowflake?

It also prompts the follow-up question: hard compared to what?

When did the resultant response to“too hard” lead to “so don’t try?” Giving up because something is too hard – you attempted, drew conclusions based on the results, and decided to invest your time elsewhere – there’s no shame in that.

But too hard to even attempt?

Easily the worst attempt at advice I’ve ever come across.

Everyone’s journey, — from love to career to family to personal — is just that: personal. To compare how one person experiences joy, pain, and hardship to another is a fruitless exercise. The brilliant academic mind is a tortured soul in social situations that the social butterfly who battles bulimia excels in, while the bum standing outside her bathroom window scrounges through garbage cans of the single mother raising three kids alone because her addict husband couldn’t kick the habit he picked up when he in law school.

Who’s to say what’s “too hard?”

Pursuing your dreams is hard – that’s why they’re dreams; because you gots to stretch and reach and scratch and claw and lie and steal and cheat for them. If you make a living creating art, hustling for every cent, sure, it’s probably safe to say your path is filled with more struggle than someone happy with their nine to five.

But that does not make you a unique snowflake.

Contrary to popular belief, you still are not the hardest working person in your town, or your field. You’re probably not the hardest working person on your block.

Nor does it give you the privilege of passing off bullshit as your own sage adage for the temporary high of superiority and ten seconds of a hard dick you get at the thought of helping a fellow artist with your brilliant insight into the Holllywood machine.

It’s irresponsible to assume fragility, not strength. Individuals are more resilient than they’re given credit for, and we have to make a choice: to be the person who pushes the resiliency of others beyond their limits, beyond what they thought possible…

Or the person who convinces them that, “yes, there’s your limit. Your reach meets your grasp.”

Gotta stretch, baby. Gotta dream. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. Maybe you’ll make it, maybe you won’t.

But at least you won’t leave this earth wondering what would have happened if you never took your shot.

Which would be the hardest thing of all.

Categories: advice, fairy tales, hustle
by Chris
Tagged: entertainment business, hollywood, Los Angeles
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