HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

HOLLYWOOD, April 17 — Standing in the corner at the Hotel Café, with my back to the walls, listening to Tom Morello singing about the people… Surrounded by friends and associates, old and new, intertwined and interconnected in some way over the last decade or so.

Jessy, who I invited, knows Patrick (who isn’t here) quite well. Patrick went to college with me and so he knows Carlos, who I also invited and is also here tonight — he also went to college with me and also knows Jessy from the trip in Seattle for a documentary that I worked on about the lead singer of a band whose roommate was the lead singer of the band that Tom Morello – the guy on stage — was the guitarist for. But I digress. Back to Carlos, who spent New Years Eve once at Stephanie’s (who isn’t here), who was my ex a long time ago. Jessy and Stephanie are good friends, because Stephanie, Jessy and I went through the Training Program together, and Jessy even went to Stephanie’s wedding, but I didn’t go, well, because a) I’m cynical about weddings, and b) I wasn’t invited.

Nancy, who is here, as well, just met Jessy and Carlos tonight. She knows Jody (who isn’t here) who worked on Ned’s with me and randomly a year later, Nancy and I both worked Boston Legal. Nancy also worked on Ned’s for a short spell thanks to Jody, but I didn’t remember at the time.

Vanessa, who is also here tonight of her own accord, worked on Boston Legal as well. Coincidentally, Jessy, I recall, also worked Boston Legal at some point, too, so she actually is associated with Vanessa, but they just met tonight. About eight years ago, Vanessa used to work at Central with Steve and Franklyn, who I just golfed with earlier in the day. I know Franklyn because we worked on Party of Five together back in the day, a show Jessy worked on as well. Come to find out, Vanessa also worked on Party of Five in her Central Casting days, so we also actually worked directly with each other almost eight years ago, which I didn’t come to know until I formally met her just a couple of months ago, on Boston Legal, the same time I met Nancy. Jessy also knows Franklyn which means she was also associated with Vanessa back then, not just from Boston Legal, but also from Party of Five, a fact she probably didn’t know until tonight because again, they just met. By the way, Nancy and Vanessa just met tonight. (I wonder if Vanessa knows Jodie, another ex who Jessy also knows. Jodie also worked on Boston Legal until she got married and left for Texas.)

Dawn, who I just met tonight, is Vanessa’s friend. She works at Rich King, a company with which I was directly associated because they were our extras casting company on “Ned’s Declassified,” a show I worked on a year ago with Dan Coffie (who wasn’t there). Dan asked me to be his 2nd AD, after I was introduced to him a couple of years ago by Jessy when she asked me to work on “Phil of the Future.” Jessy worked with Dan on “Bloodhead,” a movie in which her husband Scot was the 2nd Unit director, who I also know because I worked with him on the doc I mentioned before. So of course, Carlos knows Scot also because of the aforementioned trip to Seattle.

There was Caroline, who is here tonight floating around the place, doing her thing, figuring stuff out. She just met everyone tonight, except Carlos and I. We actually met her a couple months back at another Hotel Café show. Her brother works at Paramount, where Carlos works as well and also where I started my film career and whose softball team I also played for, where I met Andrew and Brian a few years ago. They are here tonight as well. They also know Carlos, of course, but just met everyone else tonight.

Hey, I forgot something — Caroline also knows Patrick (remember, Patrick knows Jessy and Carlos; Caroline also knows Carlos) because we had drinks when Patrick flew in from London a couple of months ago. Patrick and I have a mutual friend, Matt, who Caroline was introduced to from that night of drinks and then beyond and Matt knows Allan from their work with DC Comics. Jessy and I know Allan, who was a writer on Party of Five.

I mean, hell, even on stage, Tom Morello, who is oblivious of me, save the picture he took with me that is on my mySpace page, is connected in the circle by way of Chris Cornell, who I mentioned above was the lead singer for Audioslave, the band with which Tom was the guitarist. As the tale of the web goes — Scot, Jessy’s husband, spent a few years waiting to complete his doc about Andrew Wood until Chris Cornell was available to do an interview, who was the key piece because he was Andrew’s roommate.

Is your head spinning yet? This is the freak show in which I live in…”the city I live in / the City of Angels /Lonely as I am / Together we cry.” That’s how small this town actually is and that’s how delicate the balance is in Hell-A. If we all sat down and mapped it out, I bet we’d come up with a mySpace network that would uncover even more uncanny associations.

So as all this was transpiring in my brain – which annoyingly never stops — over the period I was nursing my Jameson’s, I wondered about all the other people we all might have had common associations with but in our individual lives may have fallen through the cracks. Within our gumbo of collected history, in a town of millions of people, here was this little collective that very randomly are all one degree away from screwing each other over.