X-MAS!

I've been thinking about money lately.

By that I mean more than usual.

I remember the fancy Christmas party I went to last year. This was the big one. This was it. This party was the reason I moved to New York. Uncle Milty's contact was hosting. All I was supposed to do was latch onto Auntie June (the hostess) and hang on as she whirled me around the party introducing me to bigwigs in the entertainment industry.

That didn't happen.

So instead of rocketing from hapless schmuck to Off-Broadway actor, which, I must confess, was what I had in mind, I did the next best thing: I went to work at NofriendoLand (thanks, Mom!).

Since then, my evenings have been filled with rehearsals for basement off-off Broadway shows that don't pay, and bedtime ponderings of the, "Goodness. I wasn't expecting THIS" variety.

This lofty dream that's so close...and yet, so far.

But something else happened at that Christmas party that I had forgotten until very recently.

Once, at the party, I realized that these best-laid plans to give me a career boost had all but crumbled around my ears, I began a conversation with one of the hottest Broadway actors in attendance at the party: a ten year old kid.

If a show on Broadway needed a kid in the past four years, this kid was the one they called.

I told him I worked at NofriendoLand.

His eyes got wide. He asked me a million questions. I became the coolest person in the room.

I thought about the irony of it all. Part of me wanted to strangle this kid. He was the darling of the party. While the hostess was passed out on her chaise, all the agents and folks who were supposed to meet ME were all goo-goo and gaa-gaa over this little thesp.

But then I was struck by the fact that this kid, who had what I wanted, wanted what I had.

I think it's would be the coolest thing ever to be a career actor on a big stage. He thought it was the coolest thing ever to sell Nofriendos and have access to all the latest video games at a super-cool video game store.

Isn't that funny?