The End of an Error

I'm officially announcing my retirement.

No joke, you didn't read wrong. I'm giving up on acting once and for all. I'm done with it. Kaput. Out. If you can't see me, I'm making the signal of "safe at home" like an umpire does, because it also looks like the "I'm done" signal I have in my head. Because I'm done with acting.

This is not anything out of the blue for me, really, although some of you fans may think it is. I've just been beat down too damn long to get up and do it again. You've taught me my lesson, cold hard world, and this time I'm taking it to heart. Me and the stage are done. Same with me and the TV and film camera.

I got fired from Ho's! for one. The comic book convention came up the same week as I was shooting some new footage for the summer replacement episodes, which will be replacing the episodes they decided we couldn't show because they're not at all suitable for public viewing. But anyway, I made a promise to all my faithful nerd fans at the convention that I would be there, and I already spent all the personal appearance money. That was a good sundae, though. Nuts and all the fucking trimmings. Yum. But to sum it up, I cut and run and left them to fill in all the A.D.R. or whatever themselves. So they just cut my character, I guess that saved them money or something, and shot around me. They also told me, in the phone message, that I was the least funny ho on the show, but I think that was just to kick while I'm down. I'm at least funnier than the old ho.

I don't need that kind of humiliation, you know. It finally occurred to me, while I was slipping into my counterfeit Metallichick outfit to go out and sign some old comic books at the convention: I'm bigger than that. I'll let you in on a little secret: Ho's! was a crappy show. Nothing against David Faustino—genius in a bottle, you ask me. But the show itself is garbage, and all of us could do better. Not much better, but still better. So I say it's luck disguised as broke-ass misfortune that I got canned from the show. And I'm giving up acting, once and for all, because I'm tired of taking degrading jobs just for the money and slightly improved Q-rating I get from it.

There's lots I can do. My time at the commune has proved that. I can writer a column, sometimes more than one a month. I can write a screenplay, no matter what my screenwriting teacher says to her mom on the phone when she thinks I'm not listening. And I can model—it doesn't even take any acting talent to do that. All you have to do is stand real still, holding a broadsword. And you don't even have to stand all that still with these modern cameras. The point is, I need acting like I need a hole in the head. And not the breathing holes. I mean bad holes.

This isn't like when I retired at 16, either, or retired again at 17. And I'll be the first to admit that retirement at 19 was completely misconceived—I still had shitloads to say. But retirement at 26 is the right decision. I've done it all, been everywhere and everything, and I've exhausted every original thought I ever had. And that was a short list to begin with.

Don't worry, though. I may be broken-down and defeated as an actress, but that doesn't mean I haven't got loads of people who still need bitching out. The actress may be dead, but the columnist strives on and on. Against injustice, and for a reasonable weekly check.

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As if I needed another kick in the teeth right now… VH-1 does their top whatever list of all the child stars and I don't even make the top 10. I was as excited as a dude getting a birthday hummer when I saw the news headlines, "VH-1... (6/13/05)

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Just when I was about to hold out for more money on my show, Ho's!, they decide to cut back on my role. No joke—me! Clarissa Coleman! The producers called me into a meeting, didn't even pay for lunch or meet me at Denny's for dinner,... (5/2/05)