another beautiful, bright sunny day in lalaland….time to get down to business….yuri and i are in the process of writing a book on voice-over, thanks to all the requests we’ve had….and it is some serious work. we are really loving the self publishing manual by dan poynter for reference, but still it’s like we’re wee gerbils on a giant running wheel….so much to do, so little time, so many deadlines and things to accomplish before we move to the next step: the writing of the book is the small and easy part: who knew!?

these days i’m making a huge push to book a guest star role on television and then to book a supporting role in a major motion picture (i work on camera when i’m not behind a mic)…so my coach/friend recommended i do weekly drop-offs at 5 hit list shows…i picked shows that use a lot of guest cast and that are similar in tone to me…so: private practice; ghost whisperer; boston legal (before it is done); united states of tara (i mean, c’mon, my name’s a shoe-in!:)), and num3ers. so i’m off and running doing drive by drops and scanning the breaks for any mention and notice of those shows and roles that are right for me….

oh, and there was a really lovely article recently written in back stage focusing on and featuring actor/writers, and they chose to include me in the piece…you can check out the online version at backstage i am in the section titled ‘more than monkey business.’ the only difference between the online and the hard copy edition, is in the hard copy i like the inclusion of the pic of me and the poster for our feature film, tumbling after, which is currently in post. cause i think it makes it look fancier, and i am excited to show off my new headshot….which you can view if you go to the imdb right now: it is my main shot..

well, i must get back to work, so many things and i am really trying to get closure and complete some before the looming holidays…i can’t believe thanksgiving is already just a week away. and then practically we’re into christmas/chanukkah/winter solstice/festivius/etc. and then it is ‘09. i still make mistakes when writing checks and write 1999 (right?!!) so clearly i haven’t made the jump into the 21st century yet!

glad the ca fires have stopped so that we can all breath a little easier (both figuritively and literally)…and i hope that everyone involved has some respite from the tradegy over the holidays.

til next time. be well, stay well!

t;)

so i have officially joined 2008. i now own rockband. i have an order in on a smart car and i am now addicted to twitter…does that make me a twitterer or a twit or twitting? i don’t know. all i know is that it is so much fun to be able to dash off a wee line about any ‘ol thing you feel like and immediately have the gratification of it going out into the ether and making you feel like you accomplished something. hoorah! 140 characters or less. and with each press of a key (by phone or by web) you can feel the excitement as you press send and it goes ‘live.’ i imagine it is the same rush dr. frankenstein would have had by pronouncing the monster alive. the power of creation, with the flick of a finger!

and a smart car no less - yuri and i designed his super cool grey with silver tridion cage smartfortwo yesterday. and i am green with envy. i want a bee - yellow with black tridion…so i can buzz about town and cause i love bees (ironic having worked on arg ilovebees) and i like the wee smartbee. of course my ‘rents just ordered a prius and a mini, so we are a family of interesting unique and envirofriendly vehicles. which is only topped, of course, by the bicycles that yuri and i ride for errands and to yoga. my god, i sound so eco. well, i suppose that’s better than emo, and all is fair in love and land.

and the RockBand. drums, and guitars, and lyrics, oh, my. oh, my, goodness. it is so much fun. and i have perma-pain in my ankle from playing marathon sessions of drums and i’m only on easy…although i admit i have tried a few songs at medium, and i simply find myself cursing and throwing explitives at the screen as the colors race by. i love our band though, i play drums, yuri guitar and our friend justin rocks the mic. and my favorite part of course, getting to make the band member look like me. i <3 the designers who knew that gamers world wide would want to play their own character creations, whether it is a mii or a rocker, we are a vain and proud people and we want to play ourselves. power to the mic. rock on.

and with that. i must. go. rock. on.

cause that’s this week in a nutshell… we ended our whirlwind of comics, movies, panels and parties in sunny san diego with bags full of goodies and sore tired feet, but with grins permanently plastered from ear to ear. what with panels (everything from xmen, afro, ben ten and others that yuri was on to stopping in on red sonja and loitering around for joss whedon….) and parties for wb, jetix/disney, adult swim, etc….its a wonder that we saw the floor, managed to buy a crapload of teeshirts and get sschwagbags galore…and i totally definitely 100% completely recommend taking the train down to sd. cause it was relaxing and we managed to avoid the insane truck fire 8hr wait on thursday heading down….ahhhhhh.
then just as we decided it was safe to climb back out and head back to work like respectable people, there was a big ol earthquake (or as wil would say — since it was his bday) a birthquake. my first in lalaland history. and i willadmit it took me several seconds to get my head wrapped around just what the heck was going on. i mean, i knew that the shaking wasn’t normal, but i just couldn’t figure out what exactly was going down. i had convinced myself my cat must really want to come into the office, but wait, my cat can’t hold the doorknob and really shouldn’t be strong enough to shake the door hard enough that the whole wall is moving. oh. right. that word. what is it again. oh, yeah. earthquake. um….lemme get my bum outside and survey damage. oh. cool. no damage. whew! and that my friends was my entire earthshaking adventure.

and then that leads us to tonight. i didn’t even know that the film i was in THE LAST BAD NEIGHBORHOOD had finally wrapped up all its post production and was doney-done-done…but it must be. it is screening tonight at the lammele in pasadena at the action on film international film festival. woo hoo. i hope it is good. i went ahead and invited a bunch of folks, and i haven’t even seen the film yet….yikes! well, the director and producer/writer assure me its kickin and well, i suppose we might as well all check out if i can pull off a bad*ss in an action film, i sure know i wanna see how it turned out…

so that’s it for now folks….and i just started to twitter. seriously. seriously. seriously.

the girlwonder xo t

so, yeah, i’ll admit it, it’s been a crazy week in tinseltown. i mean, first there was an article on me in The Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times, then suddenly i’m cropping up on Soapdom.com and The Improper….and getting emails, IMs and hits on my Myspace and Facebook sites from folks i haven’t talked with in a while or met, or whatever….

and then i get to actually read the articles, which is just too cool. i mean, really. it is awesome and exciting and fun to get to see your name in print and read about yourself as if you are interesting and cool. and they always have such a great way of making the things you’ve done and your experiences sound so important and intriguing and captivating. i would so date me if i read about myself in print all the time

i mean, really, who knew i had such an “impressive portfolio of credits” or perhaps my “luscious, full lips,” and “big, seductive bedroom eyes”…. i mean, i guess i did, but then again, i’ve always just thought i worked hard and had big lips and brown eyes, so clearly the spin that they took is much better.

and then again, it always sounds cooler somehow for someone else to say something unexpected like that. if you went around talking about yourself in third person, well, that’s creepy. and kinda disturbing. but, it did make me want to look myself up on the interweb and see just how cool i am

i think the thing tickled me the most was that i might be positioned to be “hollywood’s next it girl”. um…when was hollywood gonna tell me! how does it work? who’s in front of me? are we in line? are we playing tag? i love it. too funny! and so very flattering. and i gotta tell you, i would certainly hold up the title proudly even if i don’t know what the ?`!~? it means! but you watch out HOLLYWOOD….i’m it and i’m gonna get you!!  :p

to check out a few of the articles see:

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

NEW YORK IMPROPER

yep, that’d be me. i can’t believe it but we actually closed on our first house this past tuesday. and boy of boy now it is time to get down to business.

first lemme tell you that this has been a looooooong process - of looking and checking and watching and listening to all the wonderful people in my life and the market and the houses! $ ack. if you can call them that. i mean, c’mon the market in lalaland is just about one of the craziest most insane housing markets in the states. we looked at houses that were over a million dollars (LOOKED at) but that were scrapers, i mean complete junk pits. and we tried to decide if going with a condo was really the better way for us financially, but we both really knew in our hearts that we wanted a house, a little house that we could call home with some outdoor living space that was ours!
and i am so excited that we actually found one. it was almost as if it was waiting for us. a cute little bungalow in the heart of hollywood, not too big and not too small, but nice and cozy and quaint. and of course, near everything that we needed to be near to. which was our primary focus.
so now, we have the keys we waded and waited thru escrow paperwork and gave them all our money, and voila we now are the proud owners of a postage stamp sized little houselet. but it is our little houselet and we love it.

and now the fun begins, i’ve already made several trips to home depot to look at paint (ah yes, well, i have to get my paint on!) and various other housey things. silly me, i feel like i’ve joined some elite club where the rules are just that you own a house, but i am in, and can’t wait to do things like hire roofers and electricians and plummers and chimney inspectors - what what what!? i know i can’t wait to pay people to work on my house!!
and now we must pack our tiny apartment into boxes and shift over into our new lives as homeowners - i kinda feel that there should be some sort of award offered to anyone brave enough to shoulder the responsibility of tackling buying a house in hollywood, simply for the things we had to learn about finances and amortization schedules and termite inspections and contracts - it was a crash course in being a grow-up almost but luckily we passed with flying colors and still get to be kids at heart - and wheeeee: play house!

but not ‘really’….that’s right, as of this past week i am now a bonafide certified hypnotist…. (now i know what some of you are thinking, you mean certifiable, right, not certified…and yes, you are right on one level, i’m definitely one crazy chick, but no, i do actually have a certificate - a fancy smancy document to prove it)….so, now i must cackle again….mwah ha ha! and no, i won’t really be controlling men’s minds, it just somehow seemed appropriate following that evil laugh….

actually i am getting my degree in hypnotherapy so that i can help men (and women and children and…) better control their own minds….in truth hypnosis is a state that we all go in and out of naturally and often in our daily lives, it is simply the state where we find ourselves more ‘impressionable’ than other times….ever driven home and forgotten part of the drive (you were in a hypnotic state)…or another one: the previews and commercials at a movie are a prime example…bet you weren’t expecting that to be hypnosis….but it is….the very nature of the situation lends itself to allowing your subconcious mind to be more ‘accepting’ of outside information…which can be great! if that info coming in is helpful to you in your life….but isn’t so great if, for example, there is a suggestion to get a large coke and some candy and say you just started a diet to try and loose weight….well, then, holy schmoly….don’t you wish your mind had a little more control over the info coming into it, cause now it has to fight itself because part of you really wants that candy & coke and part of you wants to follow your diet to get the health/beauty results you are seeking….well, that is exactly what hypnosis used in a therapudical manner is for….since your mind is made up of roughly 12% conscious mind (our thoughts, will power, decisions) and almost 88% subconscious (the part that only looks at knowns — knowns that we have learned for better or worse — like that cake is tasty or that spiders are scary). there is little doubt who will win in a battle — um let’s see….12 vs 88…i think you know the outcome….so hypnosis is used to go in and actually change your knowns — and replace them with your conscious thoughts, that more accurately reflect what you want…..all done with you completely aware and participating….hows that for cool. it isn’t something that is just some tricky parlor game where someone says ‘you are getting really sleepy’ and suddenly you are clucking like a chicken or doing a crazy dance….hypnosis is something you are conscious of while it is happening and you can never ‘be made to do’ something you don’t want to do. and yet, it can help you make changes that you would like to change but that you are having a hard time with. yeah. think of the possibilities….

sure. i like cake as much as the next guy, but i like being skinny better…and when i see cake, sure my subcs. mind says “mmm. cake = happy!” cause it remembers all my birthday parties and fun times that go with cake, and let’s face it, cause it tastes good. then my consc. kicks in and says “no no, you will gain weight if you eat that, you already ate enough today, you don’t really need that”….but guess who’s stronger, yeah. the 88 subcs. basically gangs up on the 12 little consc. and usually wins — sure sometimes the 12% wins out, and we feel like we conquered ourselves…but how much greater would it be to not even have to go into battle…to see the cake and not even want to eat it right then…to have a different plan for yourself…..

and it doesn’t stop with things like food and weight loss…the possibilities for how hypnosis can help you are practically endless….you wanna stop smoking, great, change your relationship to the cigarettes where it counts; you wanna make more money, great, change your (often times we’re not even aware of this) number that you are set at; wanna have better performance results, perfect, change your thoughts about how you are currently performing….the list can take you as far as you can imagine….and that is kind of what hypnosis is…anything your mind can imagine you can make happen by training your mind to function how you wish that it would…..i’ve even seen people undergo surgery without anesthesia simply by being put under hypnosis….because their desire to not feel the pain was so great that they were able to use hypnosis to find a place within themselves where they are not conscious of pain, and in effect become pain free during the procedure.
basically if life is a bunch of knowns and unknowns - or learned and unlearned - how wonderful that we can change what we’ve learned to work more effectively, more productively and more happily with our lives…to help us create the life we want.
stop wishing you were who you want to be, start being it through the wonderful tool of hypnosis…

well. i guess i’ve had my say, only you can choose if you want to do something or make a change, but if you decide you want to, and you are finding you are getting in your own way, hypnosis can be the thing that pushes you to where you need to be….

the power for change is in your hands - or your minds as it were - now you just need to capture it and put it to work for you!

and that said. i am excited to begin my next stage of schooling towards my hypnotherapy degree….stay tuned for updates…as i really do want to help people make their lives the most efficient, exciting, effective and happy that they can be.

be well.

tara

so i’ve started studying at the hypnosis motivation institute HMI where i am currently taking hypnosis courses. eventually i hope to metriculate and get a degree in hypnotherapy where i will be able to use the wonderful tool of hypnosis with the addition of therapy to create lasting and powerful changes. i can speak from personal experience that my use of hypnosis has moved mountains for me - i used to have a crippling fear of flying  — i mean they’d have to drug me and put me on the plane to get me to go places — it was a huge hassle and a major disruption in my life and my career. i can now say that with the use of hypnosis and the hypnotic state dealing with my subconcious i can fly happily, drug-free, and i feel like a different person. yay hypnotherapy. yay nightschool??! yeah. that’s my life for the next year…lots of nightschool, classes, instructional videos, exams — hee hee, i thought those were done when i got my diploma from r.u. who knew.?!

i might be looking for willing and excited folks who want to make changes in their own lives to come in and help me accru hours.

that said, i’ve been spending a great deal of time focused on finances and money. (i’ll admit that in class one thing that was mentioned is that psychologically everyone has a number in their subconcious that relates to the amount the believe they can make in a year, etc. which has major effects on their entire life). but even before that i took a class about wealth & success….and it got me to thinking. why do we create ~imaginary~ limitations in our lives that only act as boundaries and barriers that we feel trapped and stuck within? and where do these numbers come from? i know that we can work to change that but it is totally crazy to me that our own mind, the power we really have over our reality, is one that can be used against us…i guess spiderman was right that with great power comes great responsibility. we have a responsibility to ourselves to be the best we can, so that we can live the most fulfilled and happy existance we can, don’t we? if so, then why is there this cog in the wheel that allows us to get in our own way….i suppose it is mother nature’s way of really allowing survival of the fittest, but in this case it isn’t survival of the fittest it is survival of the most mind-focused. crazy that. so any of you lalalanders driving the 101 don’t be surprised if you see me talking to myself while i am on the road, i’ve simply decided to make my choices pro-active and not simply be driven by thoughts and ideas that my mind locked-onto years ago. so here’s to us all becoming the millionaire-inside, the sucessful-career-inside, the fittest-and-leanest-inside, the healthy-and-happiest-inside that we know we can.

and they aren’t kidding. i totally had a vegi-mite sandwich. and i can’t say that i particularly liked it, but i sort of felt the need to eat it simply because every table we sat down at had an offering of vegimite on it. i think i’ll stick to the tim-tams thank you very much. tim tam = chocolate covered cookie with filling = yum. we did the tim tam slam which basically is like when you were a kid and used to bite the end of a licorise stick and drink thru the twizzlers, except with a cookie and you’re actually drinking the liquified cookie along with your tea or coffee or milo of choice. and it is messy. and the dentist will love you afterward cause your mouth is filled with sugary syrupy goodness. yes. i love me some tim tams.

and we went to see the great barrier reef. which i didn’t actually ’see’ as they’ve been having lots of recent storms which have caused much of the reef to die in the area we went — but i did ride the rockin (not rockin’ aka cool aka awesome aka fun — but rockin’ aka rolling aka pitching aka seasick rocking) catamaran out to great keppel island…and we did take the train, and we did go into the rainforest and stayed at the most amazing hideaway - the mouses house - and went on rainforest hikes under waterfalls and thru the woods…and feeding the possums and turkeys.
oh, and the koalas and kangaroos we got to see. i can actually say that i’ve been the proud holder of a koala and the proud feeder of a kanga…man those things can slobber. and the koala was suprisingly heavy for what i expected to be a little fluff ball. that and it was doped up on eucalyptis leaves, so he was kinda out of it. but they are still pretty cute.

brisbane is a lovely city with a man-made beach in the center off the river. can you say man-eating-shark-in-the-water-which-is-why-there-is-a-separate-beach uh huh. there are things that want to eat you pretty much everywhere you turn, but the city itself is wonderful. if a bit laid back - i think i might actually be too uptight to live there. it took us an hour to get breakfast and all we ordered was oatmeal. uh huh. definite change of pace.

and that was just australia. kangas, koalas, vegimite oh my…and then we were off to new zealand. i think they should rename it gorgeous land. or mygod land. cause that’s pretty much all that we could say. over and over. and over again. oh my god it is so beautiful. i felt like i had never seen grass or trees or the sky before for how much we oohed and ahhed about it. and took pictures to prove it. i think in the past 2 weeks i might actually have taken more photographs than in the rest of my entire life combined. it was pictures of sheep and grass, and hills and trees, and mountains, and lakes and rivers and architechture and sheep, and crazy pits of bubbling mud pools and geisers and sheep and cows and hills and clouds and cable cars and sheep. did i mention that there are sheep in new zealand. lots and lots of sheep. baaa baaa. i even fed a sheep herd while i was staying on a farm - miniature cows and horses and a pig and an entire herd of sheep — who came running the minute we pulled a bag of bread out. who knew sheep ate bread?

and we went to a maori dinner (kinda like a luau for you hawaii-lovers) but with a traditional hangi dinner and ritual. we also got to see kiwi birds — which are sooo cool. and yuri was picked to be our chief for the evening and he had to do the ritual with the maori chief so we could all eat. fun fun fun.

and rotorua mud baths and sulfer baths and thermal baths, who knew a girl had to get so dirty to get so clean. our clothes still smell like sulpher.  yeah, we’re smelly. hee hee. and the city of wellington is delightful. with cute little cable cars to go up to the hilltop houses, and lovely architechture, and delishous foodables. i love nz.

and then there were the cons we went to. but i can’t even get into those now. lovely people. lovely time. lovely trip. down unda. plus i got to call people from the future seeing as how i hit tomorrow before they did here at home. and we landed a few hours before we took off. hee hee. i’m a time traveler.

i <3 au/nz

yeah. jury duty those two four letter words in a smart white envelope delivered straight to your door from uncle sam. yuck. now i believe in justice probably more than the next guy, but i really don’t think our current legal system is all together too focused on that. i mean, c’mon, people can sue for just about any and everything these days from their coffee being too hot to incredibly sincere and needed legal suits. ah the letigious society we live in. how do you sift thru the junk to find the real case?

so, i’m sitting on ready waiting for my number to be called up…they have this spiffy system where for the whole week you are ‘on call for jury duty’ you call in the night before and get the judgement of ‘free and clear day off’ or ‘poor slob who has to sit in a courthouse all day sweating to see if s/he will be called up’…and that’s where i am. sittin in judgement. waiting. and i hardly think that we can serve justice when the whole group of ‘peers’ that are listening to the case are thinking of all the other things they wish they were doing and trying to get out of serving.

so, so far on my week of service, i was released for monday, and again for tuesday….so we shall have to wait and see for the next three days….but this whole judgement thing has got me thinkin’…we as people are always judging - whether or not we believe we should - we judge how much time we think we have, we judge how someone has treated us, we judge ourselves…

and then in our oh so judgemental society, we tell ourselves that we should not judge, that to judge is to wrongly force opinions on someone or something…and yet, mostly what we as humans are are our collections of thoughts and opinions on the world around us. a wise friend once told me that judgements are simply opinions with emotional charges placed on them. and an emotional charge just shows us that we believe something strongly enough to be our own unique person. and judgement isn’t always bad….when you admire someone or love someone you judge their actions so that you may better decide what you want to put forth into the world, and when you dislike something you judge it to realize that it doesn’t align with you.
so go all you jury-of-one(s), out into the big bad world and judge judge judge for all the tea in china. i’m going to. whether or not i end up doing jury duty or not.

wow. that was one insane awesome unbelievable exciting and thrilling experience. sundance. the summer camp for filmophiles located deep in the snowy mountains of park city utah in january - oh, yeah, the other adjective so blatently missing is COLD….but fingers cold and hearts warm, the experience of seeing 12 films in a five day period and hanging out to chat with filmmakers filmlovers and others really made for a jam-packed and amazing time.

we saw these 12 films in this order ANGEL-A, Luc Besson; SNOW ANGELS, David Gordon Green; ROCKET SCIENCE, Jeffery Blitz; FAY GRIM, Hal Hartley; EAGLE VS SHARK, Taika Cohen; TEETH, Mitchell Lichtenstein; NEVER FOREVER, Gina Kim; THE SIGNAL, David Bruckner/Dan Bush/Jacob Gentry; BUGMASTER, Otomo Katsuhiro; ANIMATED SHORTS PROGRAM, various; FINISHING THE GAME, Justin Lin; and FIDO, Andrew Currie….

my brain started to cloud on the third day and 6 films into the festival, and i had to start writing them down in a journal so that i could keep the plots, characters and titles separate and so i could remember which i really enjoyed and which not so much…

my favs and the ones i think YOU should see are in this order: FIDO, ANGEL-A, FINISHING THE GAME, EAGLE VS SHARK, ROCKET SCIENCE, NEVER FOREVER and then possibly FAY GRIM if you’re a big hal hartley fan and TEETH if the idea  of vagina dentata is interesting to you for more than a short film (since i could have been happy if the film was an hour and a half shorter, although i thought they actors really committed and gave compelling performances, i think as far as political horror goes FIDO wins, that and it has billy connelly in it)….

there was no skiing or snowboarding in our trip there but we met and mingled with many interesting and fun folks….everyone from the songwriter behind the ‘ooga chucka’ and ’suspicious minds’ to fellow young filmmakers passing out postcards for their films. i think it may just become a staple on our january itenerary, and who knows, we may go because we actually have a film that is in the festival or we may be in a film at the festival, all the more reason to brave the chilly below 0 air and the hot*chocolate drinking festivities. oh, and the sch-wag. yeah. even though we weren’t there as celebrities, we walked out with scarves, and drinks and snacks and notebooks and shirts and stickers and things i don’t know what to do with, but we certainly felt special (i didn’t care that the free water bottles and wi-fi were for everyone, i knew that they really wanted me to have them

all in all although exhausting and nap inducing now that i’m home, the trip was really a fantastic and thrilling experience, and it made me look at the film we are currently in post on and think to myself, hey, if some of those films we saw could get in, why not ours…

c’mon monkey, let’s make a movie…:)