If you're an actor, I think it's in your best interest to know this, especially if you're about to leave your hometown to take a shot at the big time. Let's say you live in Michigan... never mind, let's just say you live anywhere else in the country, anywhere but New York and Los Angeles, and you're an actor who's going out into the city or the ‘burbs, or what-have-you, and you're looking for any type of work. You know, the everyday type of job: waiter, bartender, gas station attendant, Don of the Mob, etc. When you mention that you're an actor, it usually illicits the most surprised of responses, like "Wow, we have a star in the making here," or it may even garner the old "let me tell you my story" kind of dialogue with whoever's doing the hiring... and that's nice. Yeah, it's nice and everything that you have the same chances as anyone else of getting that position, and you may very well get hired... God bless America, right? But were you to mention that in NY or L.A., all you'll be getting out of that interaction is a "thank you but we're not hiring right now" as they flip the Now Hiring sign over.

No self-respecting business of any caliber - whether it's a Mom ‘N Pop shop or a corporate chain - will ever in their right mind even think of hiring an actor to be responsible for the mundane shifts it takes to run any sort of operation in a business. I'm writing to you all now out of pure experience. I tried it; doesn't work. So I lie now. But never lie and say you're a student, because you'll get the same reply. No kiddies, now I say I'm new in town and just looking for work, claiming that my family moved me out here and that I'm available for all shifts. Even then I feel I'm just not cut out for the humdrum positions of the regular world. But wait! Now I'm out of work while I go out auditioning and networking nearly every day. All the money is going out and none of that new green out there is coming in. And that, ladies and gentle-germs, is the conundrum: How to keep making steady money while waiting for the "big one" without losing the flexibility to go out for that possible "big one."

In times like these, after our country was hoodwinked by Wall Street white-collar thugs and fleeced by the Bush/Cheney Mafia for 8 entire years, an actor must remain resourceful and open to all types of employment. Except those types of jobs that tie you down to a desk and make you... No, I mean the type of job where there's a set weekly 9-5 schedule. When you're an actor, all you really want to do is read, learn, experiment and play, either on a stage or in front of a camera, or at the very least at a boring house party where you are the only gleaming sensation of life in it. It's hard to keep an open schedule for castings when you have to worry about keeping a roof over your head and tossing three square meals down your gullet.

Most managers and agents don't care how you make your money to travel to auditions, to have your new headshots taken, how you manage to keep such a diverse wardrobe, or even how you feed yourself and work out to keep your girlish figure. All they care about is you being ready to take on the world once you walk into a casting session and nailing it so everyone involved can walk away happy and paid. Don't ever tell them that you can't make an audition because of a commonplace job, because in all likelihood they may never call you back, and in all probability if they do and that repeats itself you may even be dropped from their roster. When you have a regular job and you've been scheduled for a shot at a feature film or huge national commercial, you'd best have a great relationship with the boss of that job or be ready and willing to walk out on it because casting directors don't care about any of that. They just need to find the right actor at the right time, and if you're ready to show, you'd better show and put on the show of your life. With all that said: Don't say I didn't warn ya.