Inspiration via Ugly Betty / "Talk is Cheap"

As many of my close friends know, I generally have backwards weeks.

What does this mean? It means that I like to go out and see people Monday - Thursday and that I'd rather be home and relax or casually catch up with friends Friday - Sunday. I don't really know why, but that's just the way my life is right now and I find that it keeps me pretty sane.

So tonight, along with doing some deep thinking (deciding that I don't think I'm ready just yet financially and in terms of making personal and professional sacrifices to take the plunge and get a dog), I stayed in on this rainy Friday evening to catch up with one of my favorite TV shows - Ugly Betty.

Betty la Fea - !en ingles!

As most of us know, Ugly Betty (produced by Salma Hayek) is one of the most popular shows on ABC and is the American take on the telenovela Betty la Fea. Betty Suarez [Emmy award winner America Ferrera] is an executive assistant to the editor in chief of a fictional fashion magazine called MODE. While Betty works through the trials and tribulations of her dramatized for television life at the office and at home, she takes the job at MODE initially because she thought that it would give her the opportunity to become a professional writer, which is what she hoped to do after writing for the school newspaper at "Queens College."

In the most recent episode, Betty is challenged to pursue her writing and her dreams by a sandwich guy named Gio. To sum up what Gio said to her, we'll steal a line from the one and only DMX.

"Talk is cheap, mothaf*cka."

Eloquently put, Mr. X.... eloquently put.

While Betty tells people that she wants to be a writer, she hadn't really done any writing since getting her assistant gig at MODE. She decides that she wants to take a writing course and that even though her writing opportunities have not really come to her (aside from one episode last season where she wrote for Salma Hayek's magazine in the Meade publication family), she was going to make her own opportunities.

It's not often that I watch TV and see similarities to my own life. Because most of my TV watching consists of shows on MTV filled with rich Caucasian women, along with reality-based competitions, it's hard to find much in common for me in my TV viewing. However, this episode of Betty really struck a chord with me.

Fab inspiration.

Ok, so the obvious similarities are as follows:
- Betty is an executive assistant. I am an executive assistant.
- Betty wrote for her school newspaper. I wrote for my school newspaper
- Betty got good grades. I got good grades.
- Betty has many bad hair days. I have many bad hair days.
- Betty has stuffed animals on her desk at work. I have stuffed animals on my desk at work (though mine always looks like someone came in and trashed it looking for confidential documents in a Watergate-like frenzy...I still know where stuff is)

And really, as soon as I gave up on that whole "I want to work in sports" thing after taking one too many "f-words" after three years with the USC Football team, I've been wanting to write for a career. For that reason, that's why getting the chance to blog for Billboard was such a big deal to me. Even more, that's why winning that competition was a bigger deal for me. My sentences are simple and writing is unbelievably colloquial, but it always has been and it meant a lot to me that I was still able to win a competition and find an audience when put up against 25 other writers around the country without having to adjust my own style.

While it's annoying, especially to people who subscribe to an RSS feed on my blog, that's why I shamelessly promote any of my news items on AmericanIdol.com here on DaveChung.com, so I can have a place where I can see all my clips and hopefully have people read them and enjoy them. Every time I see my name up on Idol, I know that my story could be read by a few thousand people that day and even though they're often not the most exciting stories in the world and don't allow me to have any kind of voice, something about that makes me really proud. So far, that feeling hasn't gotten old for me.

Last Tuesday, I was interviewed by Mitch Peters, who is a touring writer for Billboard Magazine. We sat down in The Hollywood Reporter's studio and did a face to face interview on camera that Billboard will be using for some conferences later this year (if they post it on Billboard.com, you know I'll post it here). We talked about the Mobile Beat competition, challenges, feelings, concerts, etc. and it was a ton of fun. It was one of the bigger thrills that I've had in a while (and there's been a lot) to get interviewed by one of the authorities in music today. I thought I did a pretty good job, though I kept saying "ehhh..." before answering a question for some reason and hopefully that half hour will turn into one great 3 minute clip. And while that clip won't get me a job, it reminded me why I want to write for a job.

If I'm not writing, I can't say that I want to be a writer. If I'm not blogging, I can't keep saying that I want to have a successful blog that people know about. If I'm not doing either, I'm no different than those people who don't go watch movies, go to new websites, watch TV, or listen to the radio, because they "hate everything that's mainstream" yet claim that they want to work in the entertainment industry (that's stupid).

Beyond that, I need to start reading more. I get 5 magazines and I barely find the time to read any of them. BusinessWeek, NewsWeek, Billboard, Maxim, and Entertainment Weekly come to my apartment or desk at work on a very regular basis and I rarely ever find the time to read them. If I want to be a writer, I need to appreciate what's already out there and stop pretending like I can make it without understanding what I need to try and become.

Talk is cheap and I'm realizing that I need to find that motivation again.