Research on the Internet

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot on KCRW.

This happened to me a few days ago. Let me preface it by saying that it's pilot season, and pilot season is very hard on all of us, but on actors most of all. They spend most of the year unemployed, dreaming of pilot season, when the networks and the studios all have projects in production, and each trill of the cell phone might mean your agent is calling with an audition to prepare for, another roll of the dice.

Okay? So bear that in mind.

&quotHollywood,&quot someone once told me, &quotis divided into two camps. In one camp are the people you have to wait for, the people who come up with the ideas and write the scripts. The writers, in other words. They're the 'wait-fors.' Nothing can happen and no one gets hired until they write the script. And in the other camp are the people who wait for the writers. Those people are actors. Also known as 'waiters.'&quot

The irony, of course, is that while they're waiting for a part to come along, most actors work as waiters. And while we're waiting for inspiration to strike, most writers are eating in restaurants. I like to think that if most actors were better waiters, we writers would get our food faster and get back to work sooner. And no one would be doing &quotresearch&quot on the internet.

That's it for this week. Next week, we'll suffer a pointless delay.

For KCRW, this is Rob Long with Martini Shot.