Smile Big and Pretty? DOT COM?

In a world where I was kind of person who thought that putting "tarot cards" on my acting resume was a good idea, I also found myself being the kind of person who chose between going to the grocery store or paying for a domain name.

Guess which kind of person I am?

I don't want to just give the answer away, but it has something to do with buying www.smilebigandpretty.com.

Talking trash

Because people go to college so that they can graduate and take even more classes, I have started taking improvisation courses at an improv comedy theater in my city. They are nationally known (internationally if you count Canada), reputable, and are one of the only theaters in the city that has turned a profit year after year, even with the crap economy. They understand the artform of smart humor laced with dick and fart jokes, and in short: if they can't prepare me to audition for Second City, then probably no one can.

Currently, I am in the Level One class. I go to class once a week and for two hours, I listen to my teacher coach us on the basic tenants of improv and play allegedly simple games designed to stimulate the creative, quick thinking muscles of my mind. I say allegedly because these games are difficult at first and the tenants are damn near impossible for one huge reason: most of the tenants revolve around being a positive, accepting scene partner and I am a closet Negative Nancy.

In improv, one of the most important things that you can give your scene partner is positive response. If your scene partner tells you that you are a dog in outer space, then you should avoid the instinct that makes you go, "That's stupid." Instead, you accept their offer - offer being the dog in space - and start barking.

The other day, my class exercise fell flat on its face because I had not liked my scene partner since day one when she talked back to the teacher. She wasn't playing the game right and, instead of rising to the challenge, I gave up in frustration and ended the exercise by shooting the teacher a look that said, "I am dying."

Twice now I have indirectly asked my teacher what you do when improvising with someone you don't like and alluded to that specific classmate. I am concerned he is going to see past my pleasant, quirky facade and into the cavernous depths of my negative, hateful soul and see that it goes beyond improv.

Example 1: I blame others for everything.

"Jas, you knocked over my roommate's beer mug and it broke."

"Well, that's what he gets for leaving it on the edge of the table! He should know better."

Example 2: I shouldn't be allowed to speak in the workplace.

"I think the new girl is just a doll."

"Yeah, I guess. But she's way too conservative and her teeth are too big."

Example 3: I turn compliments into garbage.

"Jas, you're pretty!"

"Thank you, but my bottom is giant and pale and my noise does that thing where it rounds off into a ball at the tip. But thank you."

Example 4: Miscellaneous Wretchedness

"Jas, what do you think o-"

"HE'S AN ASSHOLE, FUCK HIM!"

And so, to better my professional and spiritual growth and progress, I challenge myself to refrain from complaining incessantly and saying anything negative - about ANYONE - for one whole week. It will be just like that movie where Jim Carrey can't lie, except I won't be getting six million dollars.

... This is going to be harder than I thought.

What do you do with a BA in Theater?

Avenue Q, the delightfully raunchy puppet musical spoof of Sesame Street, starts out with Princeton, the main protagonist, singing the line:

What do you do with a BA in English/

What is my life going to be/

Four years of college and plenty of knowledge/

have earned me this useless degree

Princeton shouldn't complain so much. When I did a search on the career opportunities for an individual with an English degree as opposed to a theater degree, it was pretty clear that companies would hire Princeton, a puppet with an English degree, before they hired me. I would probably do the same. English majors tend to have a more consistent work ethic for the tedious and detail oriented professions and tend to be more academically inclined. Apparently it works out better for data-entry positions.

Actors who want a relatively cushy job are faced with a catch-22: they don't have the time or the leeway to go out and audition for most paying work. Commercial projects will typically audition during the week from eight in the morning until five in the evening. Most employers with the ability to set you up with a 401k don't want you leaving in the middle of the work day to audition for an egg donation commercial.

Maybe serious actors are destined to work the tables and the odd jobs. It seems that almost every success story I know of took an interesting road to get where they currently stand. I looked up the various odd jobs that many actors held before they became prosperous in their field, all of which are attainable with a BA in Theater:

Amy Adams worked at Hooters.

Dan Akroyd worked for the post office.

Adam Brody worked at Blockbuster.

Sandra Bullock worked as a coat checker and a bartender.

Jim Carrey was a janitor.

Tim Allen dealt cocaine.

Soon to be added on to this list:

Jas worked as tour guide and mentor to poo-pelting demon children.

Look for it on Before They Were Famous in a couple of (and by a couple of, I mean six or seven) years.

You want me to pay what for who?

Those of you who are new to Smile Big and Pretty may already know that I'm trying to become a paid actress despite my lack of attending a recognized school or having tits the size of China, but you may not know that I support my habit by working in the tourism industry. To be more specific, I am a worker bee in a giant museum dedicated to one of the reasons that most Americans are obese by adulthood. It is referred to in the Skinny Bitch series as "liquid satan."

I work at Disoda-Soda Land. Disoda-Soda is an alias for one of the most recognizable brands of soda in the known universe.

Each morning, I wake up and put on a pair of ill fitting of shorts, some white sneakers with velcro snaps, and a frumpy button-up. It has SODA-SERVICEER in big letters across the back. I'm part of the admissions team and we are in charge of carrying out all front-of-house affairs. This includes crowd control, line queuing, microphone spiels, and ticketing.

Ticketing is one of my favorite places to be, mostly because it has central air, but also because I get to look at tourists through a bulletproof glass window all day. It's a lot like being at a zoo. Like animals at the zoo, tourists will engage in a variety of characteristic behaviors that identify what kind of human being they are.

Common breeds include, but are not limited to:

1. The standard, middle class family with a mom, dad, and two kids.
2. The people that hand out the super conservative religious pamphlets. You can tell who the sinners are because they have cigarettes.
3. The elderly folks on a "Last-Hurrah-Before-I-Die" tour.
4. The people who can walk perfectly fine but ask for wheelchairs anyway because they are lazy.
5. The people who can walk perfectly fine but still own a goddamn scooter because they are that goddamn lazy.
6. The people who legitimately need wheelchairs.
7. Happy people from Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea.
8. Business men from Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea.
9. German and French people who love it when you speak in their language.
10. German and French people who hate you when you speak in their language.
11. German and French people who hate you.
12. The people who ask for every concievable discount at the ticketing window.

Once the members of #12 realize that they do not qualify for the employee or military discounts, the only discounts that Disoda Soda offers, they will diverge into sub-breeds: A) The person who will say, "Oh well, never hurts to ask!" B) The person who will harass you about how wrong it is to charge fifteen dollars to see a bunch of advertising and C) The kind that will employ passive aggressive tactics that often involve their children.

Case in point, a man comes up to my ticketing window with his two children. I give him the standard greeting of, "Hello, and welcome to Disoda-Soda!" I get nothing in return a brash,
"So, do I get a government discount? I work for the government."
This man doesn't even bother to bring out some sort of official ID. I inform him of our discount policy. Namely, how he doesn't get one.
"That's a damn shame. Hey," he says to what I assume was his son, "This lady here says she won't give me my government discount. Don't you think she should give me my government discount?"
"Yeah!" The kid said enthusiastically, a mindless pawn in his father's epic quest for a buck fifty off admission.

His discount? Excuse me? Just because he is employed by the state does not mean that all businesses, much less myself, personally, owe him anything. He paid what he owed and took his minions inside.

The next highlight of my day was a woman who pushed what appeared to be a chimera up to my window. When she was finally in front of me, I realized that it wasn't a chimera; it was a boy. A grown boy.
"Listen, I've got a little situation," she said. Southern accent. Bad one.
"Yes ma'am?" I say. I am guilty of buying into the southern accent if it means I can escape a grizzly encounter with a southern tourist whore by means of familiarization.
"Ok, so I have one adult and one child and, well," she says, becoming quieter, "I don't know how you would view him."
She motions for me and I lean over and catch a glimpse of the young boy, terribly deformed, strapped in a baby blue stroller with a rabbit decal. I don't know why he was strapped so heavily; he clearly wasn't going anywhere. His stare, though depressing and vacant, shifted to meet mine.
"How old is he?" I ask.
"Well, I mean, technically he is eleven but as you can see," she said, turning the stroller so that it directly faced me, "he has the mentality of a two year old. Do you do anything for... well? You know?"
"Ma'am, as long as he is above the age of two, he will be charged a child's rate."
"You don't do anything for special needs?"
"Well, we can get you a wheelchair if you feel like taking him out of that (ridiculous) stroller."
"You're kidding me," she snapped, dropping the southern sweetness approach entirely.

"No ma'am, it is our policy to treat everyone equally."

"Well, I think that's real crappy of you, not giving him a free ticket. Fine. What do I owe you?"

She paid and huffed her way inside, hastily pushing her miserable son in front of her.

This sort of thing happens surprisingly often. It is primarily women who do it. They push, pull, or tug their special needs children up to the window and demand a free ticket. They request the same thing differently, but always with the same reasoning: "My child clearly lacks the capacity to take in and understand your museum, therefore making his or her presence merely hypothetical. They aren't really present in the moment, therefore you should comp me a ticket."

Look, I know that tickets into Disoda-Soda are not the cheapest thing in the world. I understand that it is kind of ridiculous to begin charging the child price at age three instead of the standard age four. However, that said, I hate deceptive parents who exploit their special needs kids for free stuff. They see no problem in paying a ridiculous amount of money for their normal offspring, but balk at the thought of actually having to do the same for their son with down syndrom, the daughter with spina bifida, or the autistic child with gender dysphoria. Sometimes I wish that they would have just gotten the damn abortion when they found out that their child was going to be such a burden rather than try to exploit their existence for free shit and special treatment.

This was all a long, roundabout way of saying the following: There are other alternatives for you and your family to get out and spend time together. Parks. Zoos. Funky neighborhoods to stroll around in. Playgrounds. If you don't want to pay for a ridiculous tourist attraction, then don't come to the ridiculous tourist attraction.

Those of you who are new to Smile Big and Pretty may already know that I'm trying to become a paid actress despite my lack of attending a recognized school or having tits the size of China, but you may not know that I support my habit by working in the tourism industry. To be more specific, I am a worker bee in a giant museum dedicated to one of the reasons that most Americans are obese by adulthood. It is referred to in the Skinny Bitch series as "liquid satan."

I work at Disoda-Soda Land. Disoda-Soda is an alias for one of the most recognizable brands of soda in the known universe.

Each morning, I wake up and put on a pair of ill fitting of shorts, some white sneakers with velcro snaps, and a frumpy button-up. It has SODA-SERVICEER in big letters across the back. I'm part of the admissions team and we are in charge of carrying out all front-of-house affairs. This includes crowd control, line queuing, microphone spiels, and ticketing.

Ticketing is one of my favorite places to be, mostly because it has central air, but also because I get to look at tourists through a bulletproof glass window all day. It's a lot like being at a zoo. Like animals at the zoo, tourists will engage in a variety of characteristic behaviors that identify what kind of human being they are.

Common breeds include, but are not limited to:

• The standard, middle class family with a mom, dad, and two kids.
• The people that hand out the super conservative religious pamphlets. You can tell who the sinners are because they have cigarettes.
• The elderly folks on a "Last-Hurrah-Before-I-Die" tour.
• The people who can walk perfectly fine but ask for wheelchairs anyway because they are lazy.
• The people who can walk perfectly fine but still own a goddamn scooter because they are that goddamn lazy.
• The people who legitimately need wheelchairs.
• Happy people from Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea.
• Business men from Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea.
• German and French people who love it when you speak in their language.
• German and French people who hate you when you speak in their language.
• German and French people who hate you.
• The people who ask for every concievable discount at the ticketing window.

Once the members of this breed realize that they do not qualify for the employee or military discounts, the only discounts that Disoda Soda offers, they will diverge into sub-breeds: A) The person who will say, "Oh well, never hurts to ask!" B) The person who will harass you about how wrong it is to charge fifteen dollars to see a bunch of advertising and C) The kind that will employ passive aggressive tactics that often involve their children.

Case in point, a man comes up to my ticketing window with his two children. I give him the standard greeting of, "Hello, and welcome to Disoda-Soda Land!" I get nothing in return a brash,

"So, do I get a government discount? I work for the government."

This man doesn't even bother to bring out some sort of official ID. I inform him of our discount policy. Namely, how he doesn't get one.

"That's a damn shame. Hey," he says to what I assume was his son, "This lady here says she won't give me my government discount. Don't you think she should give me my government discount?"

"Yeah!" The kid said enthusiastically - obviously provoked.

Want to see some dignity?

"I'm proud of you, my boy."