we are family

Today was the day.

Today was the day that my little chess family would be united by the sheer magic of auditions and callbacks.

Based on initial auditions from the last three sessions, the casting director and I invited back nine actors vying for the roles of Grandmother, Mother, Teen Joey, and Young Joey.  Our goal today was to match up these actors in different combinations to cook up the family of three in a believable, harmonious way.  It's like match dot com, without the drearily pretentious profile names, but with the same photoshopped, years-old pictures, sometimes.

With three actors returning for the role of Mother and two actors each for the other roles, I was tempted to recall my days of math competitions in high school and attempt to calculate the different number of permutations such a match would yield if we were to try to group the actors into every combination possible.  I didn't - too busy watching their performances to even dare humiliate my pride.  Besides, I'm probably using the word permutation incorrectly anyway.

We didn't try every combination possible.  We couldn't put the actors through that emotionally draining and parking meter fee draining process.  We couldn't put ourselves through it.

It would have been 24 different combinations of actors to go through, I think.

Rather, we concocted a special formula to test out our hunches for the best actors that we liked for each role, but even that, the whole process took more than two hours.  I had forgotten who was auditioning for what role by the end of it.  Luckily I had my casting director and producer there to keep my on track.  Now that I've decided on whom I wanted to be in my family, it becomes a waiting game:  you eagerly await a response after bravely sending out a message (no "winks" - too lame) on match dot com, hoping you're somehow in the league of "talljockinSF4same."

I don't know who that is.

I made it up, really.

All profile names in this blog entry are fictitious.  Any resemblance to real profiles, active or inactivated, accurate or exaggerated, is purely coincidental.