Chapter 21: Savior of the Week

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As it turns out, it was VERY hard to make people go see Craig Kilborn. When I showed up to the bar at Islands for what I thought was going to be epic payday I was shocked that I only made $90. My first thought was,

Ninety isn’t even divisible by 12…

I’m good at math. 

This money doesn’t make any sense. And def not worth the risk of full blown skin cancer standing on the boardwalk all day. Although I was also trying to get people to see pilot tapings, which gave me PTSD to a hideous show me and my family once got dragged into seeing. I was sold cuz the guy from The Cutting Edge was in it. (D.B. Sweeney, baby!) But it turned into a hostage situation fast. Some how this half hour sitcom was taking four hours to tape. It was a struggle to even go to the bathroom, which is a huge deal breaker in my family. 

I needed a new plan. 

(I seemed to “need a new plan” every week.) 

I kept using the pay phone in the hostel to attempt to reach Shaun Majumder. When he finally picked up the phone I was so excited. 

“WALK-IN-SHAW!”

It always amazes me when people flock to my not so easy to remember last name, as opposed to Christina- which nobody ever remembers either, so I don’t know why I’m bringing it up.

We plan a cool night in West Hollywood for Natasha’s 21st birthday. Natasha and I take the bus, because as you know from my passion for recycling, I’m also eco-friendly. (Broke.)

There’s a bus along Santa Monica Blvd that takes us straight to place we’re going for dinner with Shaun. As a girl who listened to Sheryl Crow’s “Tuesday Night Music Club” on repeat in high school, I couldn’t help but stare out the window looking for the bar that faces the giant car wash.

We head into town a little early, and hop off the bus a little after passing through Beverly Hills. There seemed to be a lot of bars in this area, so it might be perfect for happy hour.

We spot a cool looking patio just off the main drag on Robertson and decide to wander in. I hit the bathroom first thing (again, it’s a Walkinshaw thing.) I notice a man walk out of the women’s bathroom. Ohhhh this place is fun already. Then I hit the bar to buy a round.

“Hi! I’ll have two apple martinis.”

A 2002 classic.

The bartender shakes em up, and hands them over.

“Twenty-four dollars.”

“Oh, I just wanted two.”

“Right. That’s twenty-four dollars.”

Yikes. That’s like my whole bank account in Canadian. Gotta bad feeling the standard dollar a drink tip won’t hold up here either. At least there’s a huge slice of apple floating on top. Supper too. 

We meet a couple of women who chat us up and end up buying us a round. Thank God. That subsidizes my loss on the last purchase. We explain we’re from Ottawa, and as per uje we get,

“Iowa?”

“No, Ottawa.”

Being Canadian is like being a vegan. We bring it up a lot. There’s no conversation we won’t interrupt to sing along to an Avril Lavigne song, while also proclaiming “She’s Canadian!”

We wander around the corner to another bar that actually has a real happy hour. Phew. I won’t chirp anyone for drinking Bud Light if it’s only three dollars. 

This bar is loaded with hot guys. Our lucky day! We start chatting up two babes. Obvi we let them know we’re from Canada. Seems to be our best ice breaker.

They start smiling and giggling at us. 

“Are you guys together?”

“No we’re just friends- sorority sisters, actually. She’s my little.”

“Do you guys know where you are?”

The question is mildly confusing. Then one of the guy’s blurts out,

“You’re in BOYS TOWN!” 

That explains the good music and the bar across the street called Motherlode. A solid lost tourist moment. Should have gone with the story we’re from Iowa. To this day, Boys Town still remains the funnest part of L.A.

We finally make our way down to Jones, where we’re meeting Shaun for Natasha’s birthday dinner. The place is so cool (still my fave restaurant in L.A. 19 years later.) Shaun is so welcoming and happy to see us. I had only done a few shows with him in the motherland. Most recently he hosted my Just For Laughs showcase at Yuk Yuk’s. And just when I think he can’t get any cooler, he waves at a girl he knows from across the room.

“Brittany!”

Omg it’s the girl from Swan’s Crossing! I LOVED that show. She was also on Sweet Valley High, but as a HUGE fan of the books, I still preferred to read about Jessica and Elizabeth. (Great, now I’m throwing shade to both Brittany Daniel AND Craig Kilborn in one blog. Apologies to both, cuz I’m Canadian.)

(See, brought it up again.)

Brittany is SO nice and gorgeous and it wouldn’t be Hollywood without at least one celebrity sighting. Over dinner we tell Shaun all about our glorious lives in Venice Beach being maids in a hostel.

“You’re doing what?”

“Ya, for free rent.”

“No, no, no. My apartment is gonna be empty for a month. I’m going back to Canada for 22 Minutes. You can stay there while I’m gone.”

Holy shit. This was too fucking nice. And his place was awesome too. I had nothing but horse shoes up my ass with people rescuing me. First Lisa, then Marcus, now Shaun… this was all becoming a pattern of my early life in L.A. Every week I seemed to have a new savior. 

And Shaun was definitely not the last either. 

(This pic is actually my birthday at the Improv a few years later, including comedian Kristeen Von Hagen and Dave Nystrom who will also go on to house me. The pic at the top of blog is Natasha, Shaun and I the night of her birthday. That’s not Jones though, it’s us at Popeye’s after a Hollywood bar crawl.)

Chapter 20: Operation Get Job

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Swift recap: I met a guy in a nightclub in Las Vegas who convinces me I’m his soulmate.  So I go home, dump my boyfriend, sell my car, quit my job, sublet my apartment and move to Huntington Beach. It lasts two weeks. Beat THAT reality shows.

So now that my life savings is shrinking faster than a dick in a condom, it’s time to get proactive with finding a job and a cheap place to live. Which brings us to my new combo of both. Living in a hostel for free under the condition I clean for FOUR hours every morning. 

It’s hard to imagine anyone would trust me with cleaning services. At this point of my life, I had a bit that went:

“Does anyone here live in an apartment that’s so messy it needs explaining when company comes over…? I had a friend over the other day and was like, “Okay so the toilet DOES flush, you just have to take the lid to the tank off, dip your hand in the water and pull that little chain at the bottom. Everything will go down. I swear…. Oh, the fruit flies? They’re seasonal. Should be gone by October… Hey, I’m all out of clean glasses do you mind drinking out of the Yahtzee dice shaker?”

(True story. My roommate Andrew in Ottawa used it in our basement apartment on Somerset St. It took us a while to figure out where the little red cup in the cupboard came from, but once we played the game again we were like “Ohhhh that’s where…”) 

I wouldn’t care so much that my life was turning into such a disaster if I was alone, no witnesses, but of course Natasha is here. Her big vacation, for her 21st birthday. And while I had offered a free comfy townhouse in Huntington Beach, she was now deciding between the top and bottom bunk while picking pubes off a toilet. I’m sure this is what she pictured when she bought her ticket.

While I was ready to fly home and admit defeat, Natasha was determined to turn her holiday into a mission to get me settled here. Every morning from 7am-11am we would clean every inch of that hostel and talk about the possibilities. (You would think a toilet would be grosser to clean than a shower but you’d be surprised.) 

“Even if I can live here for free by doing this, I need to make money. And you know I can’t work anywhere cuz I’m *COUGH.*”

“We’ll figure it out. I’m sure someone will hire you under the *COUGH.*”

Every day we would clean every inch of the hostel. We were actually good at it. Must have been our solid work experience at Boston Pizza on the east side of Ottawa. Those bathrooms didn’t clean themselves. But even if we finished cleaning early, the hostel manager would scream,

“NO! YOU NOT DONE! FOUR HOURS OF CLEAN FOR FREE ROOM!”

Then he would make us clean his office or whatever other room he could find. Meanwhile the entire establishment wasn’t recycling. As a Canadian in America in the early 2000’s I can’t tell you how much this bothered me. Even if I asked they’d say,

“The homeless people go through our trash bins and do it for us.”

Oooof. 

It was unclear if the amount of labour we did in the hostel was actually worth what we saved in nightly fees, but we kept doing it. 

We became regulars on the Venice Boardwalk, getting better acquainted with our favourite freaks. (I use the word as a term of endearment.) I was obsessed with this man who roller bladed in an outfit that was suited for a toga party, with a matching white turban, and a ghettoblaster on his shoulder. (Apologies if the word ghettoblaster has been cancelled, but that’s what we called it back then.) He also had the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen, and was the only person who smiled as hard as I did. I fucking loved that guy. 

We found a place on Washington where we could eat for free (as long as our meals consisted purely of chips and salsa) called Baja Cantina. They let customers help themselves, and so we did.  (Probs a thing of the past now.) I know for a fact I gained a lot of weight during this period because in American, the cheapest food is also the most fattening. Dollar pizza slices, 49 cent cheeseburgers- the Tums literally cost more than my diet.

I still didn’t have a cell phone so I had to use pay phones to call the few friends I had in L.A. I was trying to track down Shaun Majumder, my hilarious comedian friend who had just booked a part as a terrorist on some new Kiefer Sutherland show called 24. I figured he could help me ensure Natasha had a cool 21st birthday despite our It’s-a-Hard-Knock-Life set up in Venice Beach. Of course back in these days, if you got someone’s answering machine and you were calling from a pay phone, you just had to keep calling back. Occasionally you’d try to throw a Canadian quarter in, but they somehow always knew to spit them out.

As we made our rounds along the boardwalk, Natasha points out a bald guy wearing a Hawaiian shirt giving away free tickets to TV shows. 

“Maybe you could do that.”

Hmmm… ya… that seems like a good entry job into show biz. We walk up to him.

“Ladies, you wanna go see a live TV taping?”

“Actually, I’d like to know how you get this job.”

“Me. I do the hiring.” 

“How much does it pay?”

“You get $12 for every person who shows up to be in the studio audience. I’m always looking for people. You can start tomorrow if you want. Meet me back here at noon.”

“And how do I get paid?”

“Meet me at Islands on Friday at 4. I pay cash.”

I started to do the math in my head…. If I can get 8 people to go to a taping a day, I could make a hundred bucks a day. That’s not bad.

And how hard could it be to get people to go see Craig Kilborn?

(The hostel we scrubbed for free bunks.)

P.S. One last sweet shout out to Marcus who not only saved my ass, but also took me to my first ever Trader Joe’s. That’s truly the story of an ex introducing you to the love of your life.

Chapter 19: Sexual Rock Bottom

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It’s pretty easy to see why this blog is called “It’s Taking a Long Time To Become Famous…” If anything is ruining my career it’s me. I get a good thing going, then take a two week break. (Or abandon a project all together.) Telling of my personality and/or work ethic. (I got a new puzzle!) I struggle with commitment as you might know from my old dating blogs. BUT- I WILL finish telling this fucking story even if it takes me the rest of my life. 

Now where was I? (Yes, I did go back and re-read my last chapter. That’s how lost I am.)

Right! It’s spring of 2002. Not really sure tagging the last blog with David Koresh helped my readership, but sometimes you gotta try new tags.

I believe it was me who first coined the term sexual rock bottom. People always accuse men of thinking with their lower regions but women do it too. The irony being I moved across the continent without actually getting a sample. Women of my generation were trained that way, even though my cousin Debbie fed me Jackie Collins books that warned me otherwise. In my fave, American Star, the protagonist saves herself for marriage- then on her wedding night discovers her husband is impotent. That’s why I do it on the first date now. Gotta play it safe.

(Not that I care if you’re impotent. No pregnancy scares and endless oral? Sign me up!)

But after you follow your genital desires and it fails you swear you’ll never do it again. That’s right. I’m 23. Not making that mistake again. (Insert smirk emoji that didn’t exist yet here.) It’s time to think with my head wherever that is. Sure I’m gonna be crashing with my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, but I was never into threesomes. (I skipped those and went straight to foursomes. Made more sense number wise.)

Lisa Gay-Tremblay has done the saintly job of picking me up in Huntington Beach (from her home in Sherman Oaks) and dropping me off at at my ex-boyfriend’s. (I was like George of the Jungle back then, swinging from man to man like they were vines.) 

She wasn’t wrong. It was a three hour drive with all the Memorial Day weekend traffic. Hard to have one of those Reality Bites Lelaina and Vicki singing “Tempted” moments when you’ve just fucked up one person’s Friday and your own fucking life.

Neither me nor Marcus had cellphones, so the plan was for me to get dropped off at Bikram’s School of Yoga on La Cienega, where him and Tanya were training. I enter the giant, sauna-like classroom wearing street clothes, lugging two giant suitcases containing my entire life. (How do you say “lost girl” in Sanskrit?”) There’s at least 100 people in this room. There’s no way I’m going to spot him when all I can see is backs and butts. Do they really do cartwheels in this kind of temperature? (I knew nothing about yoga at the time.)

When the class ends, all the sweaty bodies pass me in the doorway, and Marcus and Tanya spot me and smile. (Hugs would have been grody in this moment.) I can’t help but think of the last memories I have of Marcus… him high on ecstasy dancing to “Smack My Bitch Up” at an outdoor rave in Chilliwack. Compare that to now, him training to be a Bikram Yoga instructor. Comedians have a fascinating way of cleaning up their lives to the extreme.

As we head for the Pico bus, (like the glamorous Canadians in L.A. we are) Marcus mentions that Bikram guy is actually a huge creep who owns 13 Bentleys and cheats on his wife. Not exactly very “Yogi-like.”

Hmm…. maybe he’s just saying that cuz he’s jealous…*

We get to their apartment which might be a good location if you think the 10 is a tourist attraction. It’s furnished, in that sterile “we’re only here for two months” kind of way- no TV, no Internet, no phone. All the fun of the early 2000’s AND with no money to go out! Oh god- what if I have a threesome with my ex and his new girlfriend just to have something to do…

But it’s not half as awkward as Huntington Beach. If you have to crawl back to an ex, I recommend doing it in another country. I sleep on the couch with a towel as my blanket. (You really shouldn’t chirp someone’s apartment when they’re literally saving your life.)

Then next day, I get up ready for my big day picking Natasha up from the airport. And by “picking up,” I mean I’m figuring out how to take the bus to the airport. This was pre-smart phones, so my big plan of attack was to stand on the southbound side of the road and pray it gets me close. 

(Is this the equivalent of those stories “back in my day we walked to and from school, in the snow, uphill both directions!?”)

I miraculously figure out how to get to the airport. I hang in arrivals, and an older man who looks vaguely familiar approaches me.

“Hi, how are you? I’m so sorry to do this, but my bag got lost by the airline and all my travelers cheques were in there. I just need $20 to get a cab. Could you please help me?”

Hold up… OMG he’s a SCAM artist! WHO KNEW? (This is a callback. I hope you guys are reading these in order.)

“Oh ya, I remember you from last time. I’m actually running out of money. Any chance I could get that twenty bucks back?” 

Shocked that any locals would actually be picking their friends up the airport, he slowly and quietly backs away from me.

BUSTED!

I’m getting good at this L.A. stuff.

When I spot Natasha, I’m next to tears. Every sign of home when you first get to L.A. feels like an emotional relief.

And as I guide her back to the bus stop, I can’t help but shout,

“Welcome to L.A!”

We get back to the apartment just in time to drop the suitcase so the four of us can hit Venice Beach for the drum circle. Because any girl who was in her twenties in the early 2000’s definitely fucked a guy who was into drum circles. 

Walking along Venice Beach felt like we were on the set of Romy & Michelle’s High School Reunion, a movie me and Meghan (fellow Phi Sig and BFF) had memorized with dance moves. When people ask what I do for a living (and they WILL) I’ll just say I invented Post-It’s.

The drum circle is not really my thing, but I pretend it is and take puffs of every single joint that gets passed to me. Getting high only makes me wonder more about what my next step in L.A. is going to be… Natasha and I head off for a walk down the boardwalk.

“Marcus and Tanya are going back to Ottawa in a few days… Fuck. What are we gonna do?”

Natasha, not worried at all, starts asking people if there’s a hostel nearby. 

That’s right. People with the Queen on their money are very hostel savvy.

And it turns out, Venice Beach has a few. (It’s not all people living in dumpsters!)

We wander into one on Brooks Street enquiring about rates and availability. Natasha, being the problem solver and world traveller that she is, asks,

“And can we clean in exchange for free rent?”

“Yes.”

So while I always thought channeling my inner Mr. Belvedere had to do with late night writing…

Now…

I was about to become the butler. 

(I don’t have a lot of pics from this time in my life, despite the fact I’m actually HOLDING a camera in this picture. You can tell by the bunny ears we were really worried about our futures. Tasha on lower left, Meghan, the Romy to my Michelle on right, and all my lovely Phi Sigs all around. Drunk photographer, no retakes cuz we never knew we needed one until after the film was developed, so sadly we only have half of Gonçalves’ face.)

*Marcus was SO right! The most interesting part of writing this blog is realizing how many creeps I’ve naively crossed paths with…