Catch Up: May

I participated in a staged reading of Waiting for Lefty at the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site. Located in Danville, CA, it's where Mr, O'Neill lived for a short time and he wrote many of his most famous and memorable plays. The location is stunning and it's not hard to see why it allowed him the peace and inspiration to write.

 Xfinity commercial shoot

 Celebrating the +12 hour shoot and the overtime pay

 A sunny day with light fog

 I've never participated in Bay to Breakers, always just watched from the comfort of my apartment, but this year we ventured out to hang out in the sun and see the costumes. We packed a bag of mimosa supplies and trail mix, Urban Hiking at it's finest.

xoxo

Melissa

Catch Up: April

Jeepers crow! Let's get reacquainted here. The past few months have been crazy (good crazy, but crazy) and when I get really busy, I go into survival mode and focus on a few tasks at a time. Sadly, personal emails, phone calls, doctors appointments (oops), and blogging all fall away in favor of my sanity. But I'm back with a vengeance! This summer has a lot of fun adventures in store (Massachusetts visit! Another wedding! Mom and Dad in town!) so I'm looking forward to documenting it again. In the meantime, here's some of April:

I never know what I'm doing, and need my own cheat sheet.

Sleepover with my niece and nephew

Cole's Birthday

 

First Giant's game of the season

xoxo,

Melissa

Headshots

I graduated college 10 years ago! While it feels like maybe 2-3 years has past, I have years of photos on my Mac telling me otherwise. I recently had to get new headshots because I chopped my hair and it had been a few years since my last session. While I sometimes get frustrated by my picture hording,  it was fun to see all of my headshots from the past 10 years. How fitting for a #tbt!

My first session was with Lisa Keating, whom I found in the book Acting is Everything (a graduation present from my Mom). Lisa kindly guided me to what photos would be best for theater and agents (Fun Fact: Theater headshots have a different look than Commercial shots). Traditionally headshots are in black and white, but Lisa said she started to see a shift to colored pictures. I trusted her, and was one of the few actors at auditions with colored headshots. Not only did I stand out, but colored headshots are now the standard!

                                   

Five years later (2010) I went back to Lisa for new shots. No more baby face! Also, I'm smiling because by this time I had an agent and they need 'commercial' looking photos. Theater has slowly started shifting to smiling photos at this time as well*.

And now to 2015! Shorter hair and not as blonde. I went with Stuart Locklear this time around and I was equally pleased with his results. I kept a neutral one as a theater option, but 90% of the actors in the Bay Area are smiling*, so I'll go with the trend.

*I can only speak for the Bay Area and my personal experience. Every city has it's own market and what they are looking for. San Francisco is a small city with a mostly commercial/industrial market. The theater scene is small enough where everyone is acquainted and headshots can cross over from commercial to theater without an issue.

xoxo,

Melissa

Angela Lansbury

That's Dame Angela Lansbury to you! Angela Lansbury is one of my favorite performers. The woman has had quite the enviable career, spanning decades of Broadway and television work (I'm currently binge watching Murder, She Wrote as I write this). When I read that she was coming to San Francisco for the limited national tour of Blithe Spirit, I immediately bought Cole and I tickets. It was such a thrill to watch her on stage and let me tell you, she's still got it! 

Ready to go!

                                

Obviously thrilled

                 

I stumbled upon this a few weeks back while cruising the Internet and I'm desperate to get it!


xoxo,
Melissa

Pescadero, CA

Last Monday, Cole and I went on a mini road trip to Pescadero, CA. It's about an hour south of San Francisco, and taking Highway 1 offered us gorgeous views of the ocean. Cole's pretty game for road trips, and I usually don't tell him where we are going until halfway to our destination. Sometimes I just don't even bother telling him. He's so trusting.

"Where am I..."

Our first stop was Harley Farms. They are Blue Ribbon winners for their goat cheese products and from the amount of samples we tasted, we agreed that it was worthy of those ribbons. We picked up two rounds of cheese and their goat feta cheese.

No farm would be complete without a friendly cat.

After we grabbed bread from the local grocery store, we drove 5 minutes down the road to see the tallest lighthouse on the West coast. Fun Fact: It was made with cast iron and not steel. Cast iron absorbs water, so over the years most of the structure rusted and started to fall apart.

Even the 3D sign is rusted

Facts for your face!

I enjoyed learning that a ship from Boston had a hand in the name.

You can see at the top there are missing iron chunks from the cornice. They started falling off in 2001, so the lighthouse is gated off for obvious safety reasons.

The 2,000 pound Fesnel lens is 16 feet tall! It was moved once they realized the lighthouse was falling apart.

Our snack

Our view

We headed back into town for a quick lunch before heading back to the city. If you're ever in Pescadero, go to Duarte's and get the half and half soup. The waitress recommended it, and I was so glad we went for it! It's their artichoke soup mixed with the green chile soup.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse is registered as a State Historic Park, so funding has started to repair the structure. The lighthouse is still functioning, but bringing it back to it's glory days would be a treat.

xoxo,

Melissa