Kerry Armstrong

Today I shall be learning about the actress Kerry Armstrong. I've seen her in two things: Come in Spinner and SeaChange.

In SeaChange, she played the wife of John Howard's character (the actor; not the Prime Minister). I don't remember much about it, except that her family was wealthy. They were the type of people who play tennis and have cocktail parties.

Her character in Come in Spinner is complex and interesting. Deb is married to a soldier who is off fighting. Her daughter lives at her sister's farm, while Deb stays in Sydney working at a beauty salon/spa at a hotel. There's a wealthy guy at the hotel interested in marrying her. She doesn't seem madly in love with her suitor, but she's contemplating leaving her husband to be with this other man. Deb acts like a sweet woman, but I thought she was a bit of a bitch for betraying her man while he's off fighting.

BUT then we get to learn more about the situation. It turns out Deb's husband doesn't treat their marriage like a partnership. He's one of these guys who gets an idea, drags his family along, gets another idea, and then once again yanks the family away from their life.

Still. Some people are a bit dreamy and impulsive. I wanted Deb to be sympathetic towards her soldier-husband.

But then in the end, we get to meet the husband. It turns out he's a chauvinistic ass.  So then I was happy for Deb to dump him and go off with the other guy. Yeah, the husband was probably in line with what most men were like in those days.  I thought it was awesome, though, that Deb refused to put up with it.

The only thing is, I'm not sure the new guy is much better. What really bothered me in the story is the new man pressured Deb into forgoing a Sunday with her daughter in order to spend the day with him. She protested and he pushed her, saying the daughter would have Deb on Saturday. The poor little girl hardly sees her mother and was so eager to also spend Sunday with her. And then Deb lies! She tells her daughter she has to work. But instead she's frolicking with a man that's not her husband and not her child's father.  I thought that was a bit low. It was mostly Deb's fault for saying yes, but I'm not sure a man is a good one if he pressures you to sacrifice your time with your children.

Okay. I'll stop blabbing away and get onto the actress who plays Deb.

First I'm going to look at the biography information on IMDb.

Kerry Armstrong was born on January 3, 1958. I feel like she should be older, because she was an adult during World War II. Or in my mind she was. I guess Come In Spinner felt so real to me.  I can't say it felt like it was actually made in the 1940's, because then it would be black and white. I think what it felt like was a 1970's movie about World War II...rather than a 1990 one. But this is just a vague ignorant feeling. It's not based on any intelligent insight about film history.

Armstrong was born in Melbourne.

She's been married four times. Wow!  Her last marriage ended in 2001. So maybe she's given up on the marriage thing by now. She might have a partner. Or maybe she's realized she's a lesbian.

One of her husbands was one of the founding members of the band Australian Crawl.

With her third husband, Armstrong has one son. With her fourth, she has two sons (twins).

Kerry Armstrong's life might be even more interesting than that of her characters.

Let's go to her filmography now.

Armstrong's first screen thing was in 1974— a TV show called Marion.  IMDb says it had four episodes, so I'd say it was probably more of a miniseries. Like Come in Spinner, it takes place during World War II. A teacher goes to work in rural Victoria and falls in love with an Italian guy.

Armstrong wasn't the teacher. I'm not sure who she was. IMDb doesn't even provide her character's name. For all I know, she could have just been an extra in a crowd scene.

In 1976, Armstrong appeared on The Sullivans. Isn't that about World War II as well?  I don't think Armstrong had big part in the program. Her name is listed way down in the credits. Her character doesn't have a name, and IMDb doesn't even know which episodes she was in.

Armstrong did get a character name in the 1978 film The Getting of Wisdom. She played Kate. I read the book a few years ago, and daydreamed through most of it, so this might not mean much. But I kind of do remember Kate. Is she a big part in the story?

Lord Wiki says Kate is one of those worldly-wise students. What does that mean?

Here's the trailer. I'll try see if I can spot Armstrong.

Ah! I think I see her. I paused at some girls at :47.  I think she's the one on the right.

In 1979, Armstrong was on a TV show called Skyways. Kylie Minogue was in it too.

This is a bit ridiculous. IMDb lists Minogue as being one of the stars of show, but then in the cast list, it says she was in one episode.

I know movies do this—name an actor as a star of the film even though he or she's only in a cameo. But I thought IMDb was above that. Shame on them!

Lord Wiki says Skyways was about people working for an airline. Kylie Minogue's appearance was significant because guess who else was on the same episode. Jason Donovan! They were together in this before they became a big thing together on Neighbours.

This website has very detailed information about Skyways.  They say Armstrong's character, Angela Murray, was a country girl who came to Melbourne seeking excitement. I'm not sure how she fit in with the airline stuff.

Around the same time, Armstrong was on Skyways, she was also on Prisoner Cell Block H.  It seems like so many people were on that show.

Armstrong was on the first season.  She played Lynn Warner.

Lord Wiki's cousin says Warner was a country girl who had moved to Melbourne. It sounds a bit like Angela Murray. But I think Lynn was dealt worse cards than Angela.  She was wrongly accused of killing the baby she had been hired to watch.  Not only that, but the man of the house raped her, and she ended up pregnant. Shit!

I'm going to watch some of the first episode of the show.

Kerry Armstrong appears at 3:09. She's new to the prison.

Wait?! Is that Celia Stewart? I think it is! I think she's one of the prison guards. I'll have to look at the cast list.

Yes it is! And the actress name is Fiona Spence. I should have known that, probably.

In 1981, Armstrong was in a TV miniseries for children called Cornflakes for Tea. It's about children whose father walks out on them, and they try to live on their own.   I can't find much about it.

I'll move onto 1984.

It looks like maybe Armstrong moved to America. She was on an episode of Tales from the Darkside. Although they might have filmed some episodes outside of the US.

Armstrong was in an episode called Slippage. You know...I can't remember if I ever watched this show or not. I don't think so. But I might be wrong.

I just looked up higher in the Armstrong filmography. I think she was definitely in the US. She was also on an episode of Murder She Wrote, and in 1985-1986, she appeared on seven episodes of Dynasty.

Here's the episode of Tales From the Darkside.  Armstrong plays the protagonist's wife. She appears at 2:26. Her voice and accent sound kind of strange to me. It's American, but maybe not quite right. It kind of reminds me of what I heard from Daniel Radcliffe in this trailer.  Or maybe it IS right, but just not an accent I'm familiar with.

What would our world be like if we

 knew for sure there 

was life after death, and 

we could easily talk to our 

dearly-departed on the Internet?

The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts 

On Dynasty, Armstrong played a Duchess named Elena. Lord Wiki's cousin is trying to explain who she is, but it's going way over my head.

Wait. Now I'm getting it. Elena was supposed to marry Prince Michael, but then he fell in love with someone else.

And other stuff happened.

This Dynasty blog has a picture of Armstrong as Elena.

It looks like Armstrong returned to Australia in the late 1980's.  In 1988, she appeared in Dadah is Death. It's one of those stories about Australians getting arrested in Asia for drugs.  Hugo Weaving is in the movie, and it sounds familar to me. Maybe I wrote about it way back when I did a post on him.

There's an American in the film. Sarah Jessica Parker! That kind of surprised me.

Here's a trailer the movie. But it's not in English. Well, the actors speak English, but the trailer narration is in another language. I wish I was smart enough to know WHICH language.

Also in 1988, Armstrong appeared in a crime drama called Grievous Body Harm.  In this, the lovely John Waters plays a schoolteacher whose wife was supposidly killed in a car accident. But he doesn't believe that. I was thinking the story sounded familar to me...like I saw it on another movie or show. But now I'm thinking it was actually Facebook where I saw it.  There was some drama where a guy believed that some woman's death involved more than a car accident, and another person on Facebook was mad at him for bringing it up. Or something like that.

Kerry Armstrong played Annie in the movie. Is Annie very important? I don't know.

Here's a trailer for the movie.

Kerry Armstrong's next screen thing was Police Rescue.  It's a bit confusing. If IMDb has it right, the pilot was on in March 1989, but the series didn't start until February 1991. Armstrong was on the pilot episode, and then came back for episodes 4, 6, and 7 in season one.

In-between  the pilot of Police Rescue and the start of the series, Armstrong was on Come in Spinner.

In 1991, Armstrong starred in a movie called Hunting.  It was about an American tycoon in Australia.

Here's a trailer. A lot of trailers I'm watching today are coming from non-Australian countries. Maybe these movies are more popular as foreign films than they are a domestic-Australia one.

Guy Pearce is in the movie. For a moment I got confused and thought he was Val Kilmer.

I'm confused by the trailer. It has satanic-type music. Is it supposed to be supernatural? Or is it just about normal adultery?

I'm intrigued.

In 1993, Armstrong was in a TV show with her Come in Spinner co-star (Rebecca Gibney). This was All Together Now. I've seen one episode of this. I didn't like it.

Armstrong joined the cast in the fourth season.

Also in 1993, she was on the children's show Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left. It sounds familar to me. Did I write about it recently? The stuff Lord Wiki is saying about it doesn't sound overly familiar to me. So maybe not.

The show is about children from another planet who struggle with neglectful parents.

Here's part of the first episode.

They look like earthlings. It looks like Earth.

Well...now it's looking more like an alien thing.

I wonder how the aliens connect to the earthling kids at the beginning.

Is that Armstrong at 7:34? She has a lot of alien-make up. But it might be her. I'm not sure. Or maybe she's the other woman in the scene—the one with red hair.

From 1994-1995, Armstrong did another children's show. This was Ocean Girl. I saw an episode of this once.

Armstrong played Dr. Dianne Bates. I think she was the mother in the main family.

Lord Wiki's cousin says Dr. Bates was a marine biologist. If I remember the story correctly, it's futuristic. A family goes to live on some kind of ocean vessel. And they end up seeing a mermaid-type girl.

Here's a promo-opening credits thing.

For more of my biography posts, click here!

In 1997, Armstrong was in an American TV movie filmed in Queensland. This was Heart of Fire. It's an American movie filmed in Australia, and it was about a New Zealand firefighter. I wonder why they didn't film it in New Zealand.

Lord Wiki'c cousin has the story, and it's pretty amazing. This guy Royd Kennedy was very heroic. There was a crash with a lot of fire. Kennedy risked his life to rescue a trapped mother and baby.

I'm looking at the cast list and I'm seeing none of the names from the real story. And then I looked closer at the plot description. It's BASED on a true story. So I bet what they did is turn it into an American story.  Patrick Duffy plays the heroic firefighter. They changed his name to Max Tucker.

I'm okay with Americans feeling inspired by international events and making a movie about it. But I'm not okay with it if they say it's based on a true story. Because then people will watch it and assume it happened in America. And that's adds to our ethnocentrism problem.

In 1997, Armstrong was in a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's an Australian-American thing, with a little British as well (Michael Caine is the star).  Armstrong played someone named Lydia Rawlings. According to this review in People Magazine, Rawlings was someone's father's mistress.

Here's a trailer. No, never mind. That's the old 1954 movie.

I'm getting tired, so I'm just going to move on.

In 1998, Armstrong was in Amy. I think I've looked at this movie before. It's about a little girl who suffers a psychological injury and becomes deaf and mute.  Then people try to help her.

Here's the trailer. I didn't see Armstrong.  I see from IMDb that she's part of the Trendle family in the movie. There's three of them. I'm not sure what they do in the story.

In 1999, Armstrong was in a short film called Taken. It's on YouTube, fortunately. I will watch it later. I want to get done with this filmography.  I feel like it's going on forever and ever.....

Jump back a year. We have to return to 1998. Armstrong was on SeaChange. Her character's name was Heather Jelly. It's kind of a cute name.

Oh wow! I was just consulting Lord Wiki about the show. I had stopped watching it after season 1. Or maybe I stopped before the end? But anyway, there's a huge revelation about Heather Jelly. I think I would have remembered seeing it. Or maybe not. I do have a tendency to forget things sometimes.

In 2001, Armstrong was in Lantana with Anthony LaPaglia. And now I remember I saw the trailer, and Armstrong, when I was doing the post on Ben Mortley. Armstrong looked familar to me, and then I found out she was on SeaChange.

Since I just watched the trailer a few weeks ago, I think I'll skip watching it again. Just because I feel short on time.

Lord Wiki says Armstrong won an AACTA award for the film, so it's probably very important to her career.

I think I'm going to do something different. I'm tired of going in chronological order.  I'm feeling like Nick on my daily episode of McLeod's Daughters. He recited his old speech about rodeos, and Tess pointed out that he was pretty much just listing things.

That's pretty much what I'm doing. It's getting old. Maybe I need to learn how to shorten the filmography section of this posts. I feel bad skipping things, but in reality I probably need to skip MORE things.

Maybe I should just look at the highlights of their career. But how do you define the highlights? What are  highlights to me might not be highlights to someone else. I think what I fear is getting comments where someone says, You missed blah blah blah.... I shouldn't worry, though, because people rarely comment on these posts. I'm not sure if anyone really even reads them.

Anyway, I'm going to look at things out of order. I'm going to go by type of project instead. And maybe for my next filmography, I'll do that for the whole thing.

So...Armstrong was in two more TV shows. One was MDA in 2002-2003, and the other was Bed of Roses in 2008-2011.  I can see from the photo illustration on IMDb that she's one of the main stars of Bed of Roses.  The show looks more like something from the 1980's...just by the little...what do you call it?  I guess it's the poster?

Jason Donovan was one of the stars of MDA. Lord Wiki says it's about medical malpractice stuff. The first episode is on YouTube. I might be more excited about seeing Donovan than Armstrong. Nothing against Armstrong; it's just sometimes I get mildly obsessed with Jason Donovan.

Armstrong appears at about 2:18. She's missed her husband's speech, because she's late. That happened in my novel!

I'm jumping through—trying to find Donovan.

I'm going to try to multitask—look at Bed of Roses at the same time.  Lord Wiki says it's a comedy-drama about a woman (Armstrong) whose husband dies in the arms of another women. It's kind of like what happened with Bree van de Camp's husband. But he didn't die right away. He had a heart attack and survived. At least for awhile.

When is Donovan going to show up?

Oh! There he is!  He has a beard. He's there at 24:36.  He may have appeared earlier, but I missed him because...well, maybe I'm not so great at multitasking.

I have way too many windows open on my browser.

I wish Donovan would start singing. That would relieve some of the stress I'm feeling now.

Armstrong has ten more things on her filmography. Six of them are short films. I'll watch some. There might not be many available.

As for full length-projects...I'll see if anything looks substantial.

There's a 2004 movie called One Perfect Day. The title sounds familiar, but I think I might be thinking of something else. Maybe there was a book with that title, or...an episode of a TV show.

Ah! There were two Australian shows that title for an episode. One was Sea Patrol and the other was Dance Academy. I remember the Dance Academy one. It's the one where Abigal's younger sister comes to visit. I think it might have been a tear-jerker. Although I think that show almost always was a tear-jerker for me.

Here's the trailer for the One Perfect Day movie.

I see Armstrong. The main star (Dan Spielman) of the film looked familiar to me. I looked at his filmography. He played Andrew on Offspring. I think that was Mick's brother?

Armstrong was in a romantic-comedy called Oyster Farmer. Lord Wiki says the movie got free publicity, because the star was one of the finalists for James Bond. That's kind of funny, or...interesting, at least.

Here's the trailer.  It looks kind of sweet.

In 2007, Armstrong was in a dance movie called Razzle Dazzle.  Here's the trailer.  I think it's a mockumentary.

The little girl at 1:21 looks familar to me.

The movie is supposed to be funny, but the trailer didn't make me laugh. Is there something wrong with me? Or the movie? Or maybe we're both messed up.

The last full-length screen project Armstrong did was an American thing. It's a movie called Reservations.  It's about a thirsty castaway on an island; and lonely people in NYC; and people at a hotel who reach out to each other. Thats' what I'm getting from the plot description on IMDb.

Here's some festival photos involving the film. That's about all I can find.

Wait. I found something else. Here's an article about it. Armstrong plays a flight attendant who has cancer.

I'm going to take a break, and then I'll return to watch some of the short films.

Okay. I'm back. I'm going to watch two of her film shorts.

You know...I was thinking one thing I can guess about Armstrong, based on the fact that she's in many short films, is that she supports new filmmakers. Because I think it's usually new filmmakers—sometimes film students—who makes these short movies.

The first movie I'm going to watch is Taken.

There's rain; then books; and then someone holding an umbrella.

It's a dark movie. It's hard to see anything.

You know who else is in the movie. Samuel Johnson! I should have recognized his name in the credits, since I've watched him in The Secret Life of Us. And I'm currently watching him on Rush.

The movie is a little slow. Is it my Americanness that causes me to be intolerant of these moments in films?

Or maybe it's an artsy thing vs. mainstream.

I think artsy films tend to have a lot of pauses—no dialogue and no action. Just quietness.

Maybe I'm just in an impatient mood.

I went back to the beginning of the movie. There was a phone message. I didn't listen to it carefully enough and I knew it explained why Samuel Johnson is taking things from Armstrong's home.

Well, the message must have been from Armstrong's ex-partner. He says he sent someone over to pick up the rest of his things.

Now Johnson and Armstrong are flirting with each other.

And there's kissing.

Oh...I am SO lost.

Samuel Johnson was the wrong guy. He wasn't there to pick up the things. The husband sent someone else. Then who was Samuel Johnson? A burglar?

I don't get it.

Next film....

It's called Mind the Gap.

Kerry Armstrong needs to get up the stairs, but they're closed. She's told to use the elevator. She doesn't want to, but she does it anyway.

There are protesters outside the building. I think they're protesting a decision made by Armstrong.

Now she's stuck on the elevator with a student...maybe one of the protestors.

The girl in the elevator looked familar; and her name did too. I looked at her filmography. She was on Dance Academy. She played Rebecca.  I don't remember her at all.

Oh. Wait. I think maybe she worked for the musical that Abigail was in.  No...that's not it. I think she was the person who worked for the Dance Company all the kids were trying to get into.

Armstrong has a panic attack in the elevator. The student is very sweet and helpful. She's a good listener.

Oh. Wow! There was a good twist in the film.

Things are not what they seemed.

If you want to watch it for yourself, skip the next two paragraph. But I think I want to talk about it.

So...when they get off the elevator, the student goes to the custodian cleaning the stairs and hands her money.  It's revealed it was all set up. The students knew Armstrong didn't like elevators.  They got her on it. They arranged for it to be stuck with the student inside with her. Then somehow their conversation leads her to reject her initial plan to increase tuition fees. I'm just not sure how the student convinces her to do that. When she has her panic attack, the student does some kind of counting thing. Maybe she hypnotized Armstrong?  I liked the twist. What I also like is the student seems to feel conflicted and guilty at the end.

When people want to make a change in the world, it seems the three choices are terrorism, picket signs, and petition signing. But this movie brings up a fourth method—devious manipulation.

Here's an example. Animal rights. Terrorism is just wrong. You really shouldn't blow up a lab. I saw it happen on Rush yesterday. It was horrible. But do picket signs and petitions work?  Maybe they do...to a point. Still...so many animals suffer. Why not just do something like sneak into a restaurant and replace all the hamburgers with veggie burgers?

It's probably a bit naive of me to imagine no one would notice.

I have a better plan! You know those people who slaughter farm animals, and they get all disgusting and cruel about it. How about you get an animal slaughterer person into an elevator with a pig. Get them to bond. Then let them out. The animal slaughterer might decide to stop working at the slaughterhouse. Or he at least might be more gentle about the whole thing.  Things could go wrong, though. What if the pig tries to attack the human? Or what if the human gets hungry and decides to show off by killing the pig with his bare hands?

Now I'm going to see what Lord Wiki has to say about Armstrong.

He says in 2001, she won TWO awards—one for Lantana and the other for SeaChange.  This is the AACTA award, but back then it was called the AFI award. I much prefer the latter name. I guess I'm just more used to it.

Lord Wiki says Armstrong lived in America from 1981-1987.

Armstrong co-wrote one of the Australian Crawl songs: Easy on Our Own. I'm listening to it now. It sounds nice.

This gets really interesting.

Armstrong's second marriage was apparently a sham. She and Robinson (Australian Crawl guy) separated so she could marry an American and get residency.  This American marriage was with a friend. It wasn't a romantic thing. Lord Wiki says it's not what broke up Robinson and Armstrong. The distance did.

Lord Wiki says Armstrong was on One Live to Live. Either Lord Wiki is lying. Or IMDb missed that.

OR maybe I missed it?

I just checked her filmography. I don't see it.

Lord Wiki says Armstrong was involved with Tim Robbins, both professionally and romantically.

Armstrong has written some books. One is a self-help book called The Circles.  The reviewers on Amazon say it's about relationships.

She has another book, Fool on the Hill. It looks less available than the first one. I can't find much about it. Not that I'm trying hard. I'm tired.

Lord Wiki says Armstrong does charity work. She was on Dancing with the Stars, and on that she represented a charity called Cure for Life. They try to help people with brain tumors.  I hate brain tumors. They scare me.  So...I'm thankful to Armstrong for trying to fight them.

Armstrong was against the war in Iraq. She sat on the steps of Victorian Parliament wearing a purple bra as a sign of protest.  It's too bad she didn't throw ice water on her head while she was there.  You know, kill two birds with one stone.

Armstrong participated in a Coke campaign where they tried to speak out against so-called myths—Coke rots your teeth, makes you fat, and has a lot of caffeine.

Well....

I'm not a very healthy eater. I eat a lot of junk food. So I feel strange questioning such a campaign. But I think Coke CAN rot our teeth, make you fat, and...I don't know about the caffeine bit. It's not that I'm against Coke. But like anything that's sort of bad for you. You have to use it in moderation.

And maybe that type of message WAS conveyed by Armstrong.

Crikey has an article about the situation. I'll read it when I'm done with Lord Wiki.

I just read further Lord Wiki stuff. He says I'm not the only one who questioned the ads. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commissioner ruled that the ads were misleading.

What were you thinking, Kerry Armstrong?  Oh well. We all do nutty things sometimes.

I mean really. It's okay to like Coke. But you're supposed to be a hypocrite about it. You talk about how it's bad for you. Then you drink it when your other health nut friends aren't looking. You don't go out and shout to the world that it's healthy.

What's Kerry Armstrong doing now?

Lord Wiki says she lives with her sons in the Yarra Valley. Maybe drinking Coke? Hopefully in a responsible way. Because if you drink too much coke and you don't brush your teeth, you probably will get fat and have rotten teeth. Unless you have superb metabolism and bacteria-resistant teeth.

Now I'm going to read the Crikey article.

The advertisement wasn't a TV thing. It was a print advertisement in something called Good Weekend.

Crikey points out some irony. In an Herald Sun interview prior to the fiasco, she said, I have had to turn things down that could have brought me great financial freedom because I knew the audience would not appreciate them.

Well, maybe Armstrong's financial situation changed between the interview and the Coke offer. Or maybe she thought her audience would appreciate her defending Coke.

Here's another article about it. Like the Coke ad, this is kind of a case of false-advertising. The title says Armstrong finally breaks her silence over the ad. But then in the article, this is what Armstrong says. The campaign that I did has passed and gone and I haven't made any comment yet - nor am I going to - because there were things that happened that were out of my control as well  

Well, she did say something. So I guess that's breaking the silence. The title of the article isn't an outright lie. But I was hoping for something more.

Now I'm going to watch a video about Kerry's Armstrong's book The Circles.

If I'm understanding it right, you're supposed to make circles and write down the names of people who bullied you? And I think also the people that were nice to you. And somehow that's supposed to make you feel better.

It's something to do with facing your feelings about people.

I wish it was that easy. But for me, it's not good circles and bad. It's all mixed up. The people who have been the nicest to me are usually the same ones who have hurt me the most.

I think the basic idea is people hurt you and you write it down and let it go. It sounds good in theory. But I think a lot of times that doesn't work.

I'm still hurt from people hurting me. I haven't let it go. But I'm okay. I get on with my life and I rarely think about these people. I rarely feel the hurt. Because I'm kind of busy and there's a ton of things to think about.  Not only do I have the people in my life. I have the people in all the books I read, the people on all my TV shows, and a ton of people in my dreams.

Here's an ABC interview about the book. Maybe it will give me more insight.  I want it to be something I can like. But maybe that's an unrealistic wish, because I'm a bit skeptical and negative when it comes to self-help stuff.

Armstrong says she feels there are seven Kerry Armstrongs out there.

And she likes the number 7. I do too. We have that in common.

I'm starting to understand the circle thing. Though it's not making me like it more. The idea is you put people who make you feel bad in the farther out circles. It's kind of like giving yourself distance from them.   I think that works if you're one of those lucky people who have a tight circle of wonderful people who lift you up and make you feel good, and then other people who treat you like crap.

But for me—and I really doubt I'm alone here—the hurtful stuff comes from my family. Usually. And I'm not saying I can't put them in an outer circle because they're my family. But they're also the ones who are really nice to me. They'd be my inner most circle and probably the outermost circle. Or at least the 6th circle.

You know the book would probably work for most people...normal people with normal friendships.

I don't really have that.

For me, it's confusing. And it changes day by day. Sometimes I'll think about people and wonder, are we friends or just acquaintances? Are we ex-friends? Are we friends who have temporarily lost touch with each other? Are we going to talk again, or is our friendship just a memory?

I think maybe the thing is, I have such vivid dreams with so much socializing and adventure. In my waking life, I kind of want to be on my own a lot. Tim, Jack, and Max (the cat) are pretty enough for me. I do a few emails here and there, and some blog commenting.  Some message boards. A little bit of Twitter. That's about it, for the most part.

The weekend before this one, my sister, my mom, and I had this wonderful time singing together. We were laughing hysterically and majorly bonding. I love moments like that, but I don't need a lot of them.  I don't think I could HANDLE a lot of them.  I think some people need these moments on a very frequent basis. For me, a little goes a long way. And by the next night at the lake house, I already had my fill of socializing. Everyone else played charades, but I had no more social energy. I went outside, lay on a hammock, and looked at the stars.

Shit. I'm rambling on and on, and I'm going on so little information. For all I know, Armstrong might talk about people like me in her book. She might understand that some of us have very confusing relationships.

I just thought of something else about the book. I'm wondering if it would be hard to be honest. Even if it's just being honest with yourself. For example, what if you're trying to put your parents in circles. What if deep inside you feel one parent belongs in circle 1,  but another parent belongs in circle 3? Are most people going to feel okay writing that down? I would feel guilty about things like that.

Or what if it's your kids? Are you going to be able to admit that you feel closer to one than the other four?  What if one of your kids is being hateful towards you lately? Will you admit that you feel they belong in the 7th circle?

Sometimes it's best NOT to write things down and admit your feelings. Sometimes it's better to distract yourself.  Go play a video game or something. And eat some ice-cream. Drink a Coke. Or a healthier drink.

I've been struggling to find some recent information on Armstrong. The most recent I've found so far is this 2012 article.  Armstrong says that she's refusing projects, she's being offered, because she doesn't like female roles she's seeing.

The article says she was teaching acting at the 16th Street Acting Studio.  I wonder if that's still the case.

Yep! She is actually. Here's one of the classes. It's Industry/Advanced Scene Study.  Then there's also a Scene Study class.  For one you have to audition, and the other requires submitting a showreel. So it's not like if you're a fan of Armstrong (or a stalker) you can just pay $600 and spend every Thursday with her. Well, if you're a stalker or fan with good acting ability, there might be some potential there.

I just thought of something. How many successful TV/movie stars were once borderline-stalker fans of other celebrities? I mean before they became famous themselves.

Well, I'm glad Armstrong is keeping busy with something.  It makes me feel she might be okay in life. I like knowing that, Or...imagining that.  You can be busy teaching acting classes and still be having a really tough time in life.  The same can be said on someone who's currently on a hit TV show.

And yesterday I was feeling sad for Peter Bensley because it seemed like he faded into oblivion. But who knows...He could be super happy and busy, just not doing things that are attention worthy.

I think I've written a novel here.

I need to go to bed.

If anyone has actually read this, I hope at least some of it made sense to you.

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