Grin and Bear It: How to Be Happy No Matter What Reality Throws Your Way (18 page)

When the real estate market crashed in 2008, a lot of developers were stuck holding too many properties that suddenly became more overhead than they could carry. There was a flood of inventory on the market and very few qualified buyers. When you’re in the business of flipping homes, you can’t hold on to a property for too long because you rely on the income from the sale to fund the next venture. Some developers went into panic mode because most were heavily leveraged, which forced them to unload their real estate holdings at bargain basement prices in order to pay down some of their big debt. Other developers in L.A. weren’t as brave as Jeff. They thought they could ride out the dismal real estate market. And a lot of them lost everything.

When Jeff realized the market was crashing, he could have panicked, but he didn’t. He put aside his ego, lowered his prices, and got out fast, without taking as hard a financial hit as many others in the business. Even though he felt the financial pinch, he did the right thing based on the state of the market. At the time, I think Jeff was terrified that he’d failed because he had to sell the houses for less money than he could have if it had been an up market. But I didn’t see his actions as a failure at all. I saw his reaction to the market as courageous and savvy. There is no such thing as a life or career that doesn’t have ups and downs. Ask any working actor in Hollywood, and they’ll tell you that like most businesses, you have to ride the waves. Real estate is no exception.

The most successful people on the planet know when to fold their cards and cut their losses. However, the 2008 real estate crash was the first time I ever saw Jeff outwardly appear vulnerable. He loved flipping houses and he felt like that had been stripped away from him. Jeff was making a great living and then one day, the market changed and everything stopped.

Well, not
everything.

Like most unexpected changes, when one door closes you have to believe a window usually opens.

Jeff’s liquidation allowed him the opportunity to move into another area of interest he’d been eyeing but hadn’t gotten around to—design. By making this shift, he successfully redefined his passion and was able to express his talent in a new way. I don’t know if Jeff would have walked this path had the market not forced his decision to do so. In the end, it worked in his favor because he now has a thriving design business that brings him a tremendous amount of satisfaction as well as another outlet for his immense creativity.

Don’t let failure stop you from pursuing or living your dreams. The key to overcoming failure is not to wallow in it for more time than you need—for me, that’s somewhere around thirty minutes—because you are wasting precious time. You paid for that failure, so you may as well take that knowledge and do something much greater with it than feeling sorry for yourself.

Owning the failure so you can own the forward—that is what failing forward is all about. I failed forward in some very strange ways, especially when I was hired to sell sausages around 1997 at the farmer’s market in L.A. I learned that I would sell more if I stroked the sausages. It wasn’t really my idea. Customers asked me to do it. As an aspiring actress, I thought of it as performance art. Okay, maybe that was a bit of a push, but hey, it worked. I sold more sausages than anyone else.

The first real job I landed that made me feel as if I had finally “made it” was a show I co-hosted with Dr. Drew Pinsky for the Discovery Health Channel. It was like the show
Love Line
, and I was the female Adam Corolla. It was a very exciting gig because this was the first time a studio sent a car for me and I would have my own dressing room.

I had arrived.

I was in show business.

It was like a dream come true.

My first assignment was a masturbation party in Florida.

I actually had to interview couples while they were masturbating.

Since this was a Discovery Health show, the participants were clothed, but they had ticklers and other toys they were using to help them climax. One older man told me that when he was close to climax, he would say, “Wheezy Peezy.”

Other shows I got to take part in included watching a man get his balls pierced and a woman who had a necklace that said, “I
(fill in blank)” rhymes with “Rum.” This was not the Hollywood break I thought it was. Most everything I ever planned in my life never seemed to work out the way I thought it would. There’s an old saying: “We make plans and God laughs.” Well, God sure does have a good sense of humor because I am certain my life has offered more than a fair share of laughs up there in heaven. Yes, I believe in heaven.

The shows never aired. The series was reconfigured into a new concept, reshot and renamed,
Strictly Sex with Dr. Drew
. It was a very clinical show that didn’t call for a funny sidekick. That was probably a good thing.

I could have been deterred by that experience, but I wasn’t. I became more determined than ever to prove I could make it. When something looks like it’s going in one direction, it can actually be moving in the other and before you know it, become something else altogether. The important thing to remember is to never give up. Despite the letdowns, I tried to make the best of every situation I was in, trusting it would lead me in the direction of getting what I wanted.

The only time I couldn’t get into character for a job was when I tried my hand … my voice … at being a phone sex operator. When I applied for the … position … job … the manager told me I would be very good at it because I sounded like I was extremely young. Right then I knew I was out of my comfort zone. Still, I thought it might be fun or at the very least, interesting. As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t go through with it. It was pretty much the moment the woman next to me was talking to her caller about unspeakable things while ordering her meat lover’s pizza in the background that I knew this was not for me.

And then there was a time that an ex-manager (underscore ex, you’ll see why in a minute) had booked me to do a video for a product called, “The Dick Towel.” One side of the towel had a rather large erect penis, and the other side showed the same penis after getting out of the water. Think “shrinkage.” My manager actually took pictures of me with the towel and put them on the Internet without letting me know. I didn’t need dick towel photos out there. Even I didn’t want that kind of attention!

I accidently left the dick towel at my mom’s house during a Christmas visit. I was horrified when she randomly appeared in her kitchen wearing the dick towel, shrinkage side out. She had no idea what image was on the towel she was wrapped in and I’ve never been able to get the image of her in the dick towel out of my mind.

Frustrated by the “shrinkage” on the acting side of life, I continued my budding rap career in 2005 by joining a group when one of my theater friends from UCLA had to drop out. This group eventually morphed into another act called Hot N the Biscuit. Although we originally started out as a JAP Rap group, singing songs about Jewish-American Princess issues, such as “Yoga Ho,” our style of rap changed over time. We went from class to crass, with a repertoire of new songs about funky undies, Bob Saget, and Punani. We began to get a little attention for our music, performing at the Telluride Film Festival, the Viper Room, the Knitting Factory, Luna Park, and the Laugh Factory. We shot music videos, released a CD, had an album on iTunes, and enjoyed the run while it lasted. I loved performing and doing our shows, but I wasn’t growing or going in the direction I wanted to go in. It’s hard to be taken seriously as an actress, especially when I was spending my time breaking it down in the street, wearing dreads and backward baseball hats.

Backstage at the Knitting Factory before a Hot N the Biscuit show—2003.

For many years, I didn’t think working as an actress was something I had to give to myself—I believed it was something other people would give me. I felt my career was totally in their hands. That is a lot of power to hand over to people who are, frankly, concerned with their own careers so they can pay
their
bills to support
their
families.

I believed a career was like a fancy vending machine where I could simply push a button and get a treat. I had no idea that if you really want something, you have to fully commit to it, show up, be present, do the work and stop complaining! I didn’t understand that like anything we do, you have to keep building momentum to see results. Eventually, someone will take notice and progress will be made. I spent years watching friends of mine get work, I saw their careers growing, but I couldn’t understand why the same wasn’t happening for me. Did I bother to really look at what they were doing to acheive their results? No. Of course not! I learned I had to persevere with the work I initially
didn’t want to do
. Earlier in my career, if I did the work and didn’t get an immediate result, I gave up.

Finally, I decided to get serious and focus on what I wanted. I spent two and a half months working like a serious professional, doing the work and being prepared. I did research, showed up early instead of being perpetually late, prepared for my scenes, and made sure I was totally ready to do the work. I began to care about the people I was meeting and showed my appreciation for them by honoring who they were and supporting that the work I was seeking was their project, not mine. Learning to be sensitive to the people I work with and for maximized my chances of being SEEN.

During those couple of very focused months, seemingly, out of the blue, CBS called and asked me to come in and read for their head of casting. This was the first time I didn’t go into an audition with the mind-set that just because I showed up and did a good job, there would
and
should be a positive outcome. The reality of the acting profession is that you have to go in, and audition over and over. Then, maybe, just maybe, someone will take notice of your work. And when they do, it has all been worth it.

In my personal life, failing forward also helped me close a chapter with Chris. Several years after we divorced, I unexpectedly ran into him at my local dry cleaner. It was divine intervention because that was the day I knew that chapter of my life was over. Looking back, I realized that I married this man who was really just my buddy and someone I loved performing with. We certainly had a lot of fun, and from the outside looking in, people probably thought we had a wonderful relationship when, in fact, we had no relationship. Chris and I had fun, but when, the going got tough, he ran.

I often look back on the characters we created together, especially Gordy and Lolly. It’s so strange that these characters took on a life of their own, and when Chris and I broke up, that project disappeared, which made me almost as sad as losing my husband. Does that make me sound shallow?

Maybe, but it’s the truth.

Ten years of my life came full circle at the dry cleaner that day. Oddly, Chris had become nothing more than a stranger. I felt nothing when I saw him, and ultimately, that was a good thing.

I had no regrets.

No remorse.

No sadness.

Just nothing.

And that in and of itself felt good—
really
good, because it meant I’d gotten through that moment of my life and was willing to stand in truth because I had accepted that we failed.

For me, learning to fail forward became a journey of embracing the unknown. It meant having to refocus on the positive things that were happening all around me, events I couldn’t see until I learned to open my eyes and appreciate my life—as challenging as it was to me—and understand that it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, I could honestly say it was … good.

12

Finding Guidance, Wisdom, Family, and a Home

Out of total desperation,
and I think as a way to help me get out of my funk and bad dating machine, my sister persuaded a friend to give my number to a guy named Jonathan, who they’d been trying to fix me up with for some time. He was doing his sports medicine fellowship at Kerlan Jobe in Los Angeles, where the friend’s husband was one of the partners. I’d known their family for years. After seeing how heartbroken I was, they’d hoped I’d meet someone. When I didn’t, they kept mentioning this nice Greek doctor but seemed hesitant to pass on my number. I suppose they worried that if we didn’t hit it off, it would be awkward. I was sad, hurt, and scared for so long, but around this time, I was actually near being at peace with the idea of being alone. I wasn’t desperate to be in a relationship and was actually feeling, perhaps for the first time in my life, comfortable in my own skin. I guess you could say I got out of my own way and embraced whatever the future held for me.