To Try and Cheer Myself Up

It seems that there is someone else in the internet world with the same blog title as me. He doesn't seem to update very often, but his last post, which he says he got in an email, was so fun and poignant that I just felt the need to share.

I am seriously starting to wonder why Darcy has stuck around for so long :p

Dating Actors

Don't date us. Seriously. Don't date an actor. I know we all seem to be very charming and outgoing when you first look at us, but I'm here to tell you something; we are the worst people in the world to date. We are all slowly killing ourselves internally. We are. We are faced with rejection on a near-daily basis. And as much as we tell you that it doesn't bother us, it does. It hurts the very core of our beings.

We are only used to seeing people for six weeks at a time. After that, the sound of the same person's voice will make us want to scream. We hate it when people tell us what to do, but we will constantly ask for advice. We want a director in our lives. Someone who is telling us things we want to hear (praise, attention, affection), but when that person has constructive criticism, we can't stand him or her anymore. If you ever tell us how to do something or correct us on how we remember things, you're pretty much out of our lives forever.

We only have the same six stories about how great some summer show was and we will tell them over and over and over again.

We might get into fist fights over the best season of SNL.

We are always talking to ourselves. In the shower, in the car, in our beds at night. Sometimes you will find us talking to corners, plants, televisions. We sometimes want you to listen to us say the same three minutes of material you've heard about one million times and then ask if you can see the "subtle" changes we have made.

We are constantly having to see other people's shows, even really bad shows, and we have to tell the person that was in the show that it was really good work. We're not being a good friend or anything, its just that deep down we know that if the other person were up for the same role we're up for, we know that we are better and will get the part. It's not pretty, and we know it. We are horrible, terrible, annoying people.

The bitch of it is, every single one of us will tell you that we never want to date an actor.

I bet every actor you know is dating an actor. If they weren't actors when they started dating, they became actors (or techies) by having to "help out" with a show when someone drops out. Eventually, everyone in the circle becomes a performer. Every single one of us will tell you that we never want to date an actor; that they are moody and flaky and irresponsible and self centered. And then we crawl right back and date another actor. Because we are slaves to our talent. We're slaves to pretty things. We are more turned on by stage presence than a good meal. I'm not kidding. I don't care how well you cook or dress or hike or catch a football. We want to see you do some Tony Kushner. That's all we want. That is so hot.

We love ourselves more than anyone else in the world, and we hate ourselves just as passionately at the same time. We will be so happy that we will start crying because we realize that we may never feel this happy again. We will be so angry that we will create a whole situation out of the lack of ice in the freezer. We create our own drama. We live and breathe drama. If there's no drama, you're not living. We hate each other passionately for forcing us to go see other shows and having to listen to their drama when its OUR drama and OUR shows that are the most important. We'll skip a friend's show to have sex, and then when they skip our show to go to the emergency room, they are assholes.

You. Can't. Win.

An actor will kill you slowly. We never shut up. We never stop talking. When we've stopped talking it's because we're depressed, and we will be blaming ourselves, but we'll probably take it out on you. Do you want to live with this? Save yourself the pain and self-esteem issues. Sure, we're great at parties, but when the lights go out, we are miserable, moody, overly sensitive people with such paranoid delusions that we are able to convince ourselves that the entire world hates us.

I may never get to do a show again for this, but I think that it's good to let you know that we are not what we appear to be. We can't help it. We're actors.