so i really like a lot of shows por ejemplo, la oficina y bailando con las estrellas. especially that last one even though i know i'm in the 52 to 85 demographic. yep, just me and betty white talking 'bout how darling that tom bergeron is and isn't it something they let that asian and the gay judge? i also love ugly betty. i do realize it's not a terrific show by any means but it's so pretty and crisp and it has my friend in it. oh, who's that you ask? why ana "hilda" ortiz, por supuesto.
we went to college together and i guess we were acquaintances more than actual friends. ok, well, i guess we weren't even that. but we DID in fact have a dialogue once. well, i guess the word "dialogue" connotes something shared between 2 people and i can't say i shared anything more than a wan smile. more on that later.
i was a freshman while she was a senior. let me rephrase that; she was THE senior. seriously so cool with her glossy pocahontas hair, effortless beauty and envy inducing style. she effing wore the SHIT out of those tiny backpacks. (it was the 90's after all). remember those? what the hell were those all about anyway? why would someone want something that looks like it was made for those kids who never grow but don't want to dress in the target toddlers department? you know those kids who are like 16 and look 3? i'm just gonna say it: those kids are so ugly they're cute. sorry.
at our esteemed theater school at the university of the arts "GO ARTVARKS!" the whole school got together once a week for a class called business of the arts. we discussed things like blah blah blah agents and blah blah headshots and often the actual shows the school put on. one week the discussion was about "some show that i most likely hated because it wasn't a musical". for some weird reason (but not that weird at all because we were in a school for ACTORS WHO LOVE THE SOUND OF THEIR OWN VOICE) the discussion got heated and everyone was talking over each other (again, WEIRD) until ana ortiz' shot her hand up in the air and said in a ridiculously strong puerto-rican accent of which in my mind over the years has morphed into rosie perez from "white men can't jump" and says,
"CAN WE GET BACK TO THE WORK HERE?"
and i don't know why but for some reason for me and my friends, that was it. over the next four years we found every opportunity to work that phrase into our daily lives. example:
deirdre: molly, wanna go grab dinner?
molly: CAN WE GET BACK TO THE WORK HERE?
then there was the incident that defined my freshman year. at the end of the year we were required to do a showcase which is acting out a scene in front of the whole school and being graded on that scene. sounds fine except that the scenes and scene partners were chosen for you. i had to do a scene in which i had to act DRUNK and SEXUAL. complete nightmare for an 18 year old me. i felt like carol burnett. to top it off i was assigned a scene partner who was so spaced out that he DIDN'T SHOW UP THE DAY OF THE PERFORMANCE. that's right. you heard me. the scene that we worked so hard on and that our gpa relied on almost didn't get to happen. my friend peter had done the scene before so he stepped in and held the script and we actually got through it. i'm sure it was terrible but no terrible-r than it would have been if my partner had showed. so i'm sitting on the staircase afterwards and trying to wrap my head around what had just happened when i heard someone coming down the stairs and then felt a hand on my head. i looked up to see pocahontas herself say to me, (rosie perez again, for effect) "you're a trooper". except it for sure sounded like "you're a troopa".
so, yeah, i'll continue to watch the dickens out of ugly betty. and my scene partner by the name of kelly mccoy? well, he was just wandering around town and FORGOT.
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