The Complete Palm Reading of Marilyn Monroe

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Pinned to the top of my facebook fan page (for now!) is the page’s first and only Note (so far!), where you can read the in-depth palm reading.

Follow me on facebook, Instagram(@ashleyasmarilyn) and YouTube for more content like this!
I share new and unique, light-hearted Marilyn videos every other Monday.

The past few weeks I’ve had aren’t your typical thrill-seeker’s dream, but they’ve certainly got me all revved up!

The biggest challenge for me in this post (heck, in this BUSiness) is to give you the information while I toe the line between coming across as arrogant and bragging, or coming across as ungrateful for these wonderful happenings, so lemme just start with this: I assure you, it’s neither. I’m super excited about this stuff, but also very humbled by the chance to be a small part of great things.

I’ve been pounding the pavement for what seems like forever and a day, and these past few weeks are starting to feel like the labor tree is bearing some fruits! Now, objectively – I haven’t landed some starring role in a groundbreaking film or anything. It may not seem like much, but the struggle is real, and any actor knows that you face a LOT of rejection and heartbreak before you get a tiny sliver of light. Well this post is to share with you that I’m seeing a little bit of that dream-lifting light! And I’m not taking it the teensiest bit for granted. I’m adding that light to my bathwater and soaking up the glow!

First things first, the scrape with destiny that seems to have started this little snowball – I had the greaaat fortune to bump into BOBBY FARRELLY at an event I was working!!! He even helped me pick my books off the floor, in a perfect nerd-girl meets nice-guy scenario. Maybe the rubbing of those elbows transferred a little Hollywood pixie dust and helped the universe organize my recent luck…

Then: A while ago I filmed for a TruTV show and they have finally started *airing the new season,* so that’s more good news!! Keep your eye on this website, I’ll let you know when my episode airs!

The next thing I know, I get called to be part of one of my all-time FAVORITE TV shows!!!!
I’d been watching them win all kinds of awards this season, cheering them on, and lo and behold I get called to work background!? Now, being an extra is not glamorous, it’s not some amazing role that becomes your “big break,” but being side by side with the actors who play characters who feel like family is one surreal feeling, and it was another chance to brush up against destiny for me. Plus it was a day in the life I’ve wanted to lead since I was two years old: On a professional set, surrounded by hardworking, good people who are all working together to create something original, and something that truly makes people FEEL something strong and wonderful. In a room surrounded by dreamers and creators. Home.
Maybe someday I’ll be a regular on a series like this, but for now… I appreciate this.
If you’re following me on ANY platform, you won’t be able to miss my announcement when the episode airs!!!

There have been a few Marilyn events, lots of Marilyn Monday videos – OH! I FINALLY broke 100 subscribers to my channel!!! Another great thing!!! I was able to claim the MarilynMonday url on YouTube, so I’m a bit easier to find now! We’re coming up on a YEAR of weekly videos, and boy has it been a lot of work! Especially with all of this other stuff going on at the same time. But it looks like it may become something, so let’s see what happens.

Also, I got new headshots (since I couldn’t stand not being blonde for a minute), so this replaces August’s updated pic:

I am looking forward to telling you the names of the shows, and a little more good showbiz news that I’m still keeping quiet about, but for now, this is all I can say. So CHEERS and good fortune to you! ‘Til we meet again…!

xoxo

Me – not the website!
I finally gathered up the courage to chop off my long blonde locks and go short and brunette! It’s like seeing a different person in the mirror, but umm….. that’s nothing new for me! Haha
I’ve got a bunch of ideas I’m working on bringing to life, trying to focus on one at a time so they actually get created at the level of quality I like to guarantee, but I’m just so excited about every one of them!!! Some are a bit more complicated than others, but I’m looking forward to sharing them with you as they’re hatched! In the meantime, I’ve got another tv appearance in post, so I’ll keep you posted about the release… and as always, you can catch me on YouTube every week on Marilyn Monday!
The channel is growing steadily, but the more you share the videos with friends and fellow Marilyn fans, the sooner we can start creating better, higher-budget content with extras like special celebrity guests and contest giveaways! Thank you for all of your support on the road so far, we’re really looking forward to a great future with you guys.
Oh, August 28th will mark the *6 month anniversary* of Marilyn Monday!!!
That’s right, as of that date, we’ll have brought you 28 weekly videos, plus a few bonus *special occasion* videos!
We’ve got a bunch more in store for you, too, so please share your favorites like crazy so we can grow and really get cooking!!
Thank you for finding us so early on in the game, just imagine what we can accomplish together in another six months!

As always, if you’re looking for an actress, celebrity impersonator or comedian to host your game night (trivia, bingo anyone?), or to sing for you and your guests at a birthday or party, or to cut the ribbon at your grand opening, or be a judge at your pageant, or entertain (you and) attendees at your next trade show… or you know, anywhere entertainment is needed… you have your choice of Marilyn, Lucy, Jeannie, Elsa, Goldie and many more RIGHT HERE with Ashley Clark!!! Have costumes, will travel!
If you’re a venue that’s looking for a great live show, you’re in the right place as well! Ashley offers a full-length variety show complete with comedy, music, celebrity impersonators, magic, and even drag stars!! If you have special requests about your preferred talent line-up or types of acts, just let us know what your event requires and we’re happy to arrange the perfect guests stars for your unique show experience.

See you on Monday, if not sooner!!

Shaking things up, this time I’m opening with the news –

Coming soon!
Never short on fresh ideas, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor’s Authority (yes, the brilliant people who brought you the famous “What Happens In Vegas” ads) will soon be launching a new ad campaign and Ashley will be all over it, so keep a look-out!
Also on the horizon is a music video release that was loads of fun to shoot in some very fun locations, & also get ready for a new character in her Events repertoire!
You never know what to expect in Ashleyland!

And now, the thinky part:
I’m not sure if you watch the show Silicon Valley, but lately Las Vegas has felt like a giant Incubator that has been nurturing my need to be creative and expressive. I’ve been digging through boxes looking for old tubes of acrylic paints and canvasses, organizing my character costumes and trying to decide if I should clear some away to make room for new ideas and exciting projects… There is something big in my soul that has been waiting not-so-patiently to erupt into being, and I am going crazy trying to isolate the idea and clear its path!
Like any artist, I’ve got tons of unrealized visions and ideas just sitting around in the corners of my mind waiting to see if I’ll ever give them my full attention. They’re in various stages of development. Some of them are terrible but I refuse to let them go. Some of them are amazing but nearly impossible to make with available resources. Some of them are just an intangible feeling that wants to be expressed. Some would even be simple to create but just feel overwhelming or out of reach for some reason. It’s like the opposite of Writer’s Block… Like Writer’s Overload. The best way out? Collaboration. Let’s make something!

I’m not one for “New Year’s Resolutions” (they all too often fail), but I do have a standing mantra that serves me every day, all year long: Create something unique that elicits an emotional response from another human being. I don’t always achieve it right away, but I can’t help but have ideas, and often the universe puts me right where I need to be with all the people and resources necessary to make something magical. I’ve never been one to walk away from something that feels right (which isn’t always a good thing, like pizza), so when I am able to introduce my ideas and bizarre little projects to such an amazing group of supportive, loving individuals such as yourself, I am truly LIVING. All I want to do is “feel” and share the “feel” with others, so THANK YOU for giving me life! I promise not to let you down, to keep on truckin’, and to keep you guessing… And I promise you that I will never stop Making the Fun. The manufacturing and distribution of the Fun is always happening over here in Ashleyland in some way, and I will always find a way to get that Fun to you! There is always more to come…
As always, please keep me in mind if you’re attending or throwing an event that could benefit from the skills I have to offer, I am always listening for the call!

Been having a really tumultuous, emotional few days.
Kept my composure for the most part, hadn’t cried for once… I desperately needed to go to the ocean today. The beach has always been the place I can go to put everything in perspective. It’s a massive reminder that I am…not massive.

I let myself feel every feeling. I let the waves bring me serenity and love, and take my pain, anger and sadness out past the horizon. As the last tears rolled down my cheeks, I lifted them away with my fingers. I bent as the water approached and gave my salty tears to the salty sea. The tides pounded at the sand, four-foot swells just steps in front of me, then gushing around my ankles as if the Pacific was demonstrating its great force and control to me. I gave the Sea my greatest respects and reverence, recognizing its incredible power and soul.
As if it felt the bond, the turbulence calmed for a moment, and the newly soft waters slid up and gently lapped at my toes, paused there, and subsided. I watched, surprised at the sea’s acceptance, and it rose once again to give me an affectionate light reassurance, and glided away again. The suddenness of the shift in vibration altered the emotions I was experiencing so swiftly that I left out an involuntary laugh.
The smile was so welcome on my face and in my heart that I kept it, nurtured it. I fed the freedom of my new smile on a deeper level… I began to dance.
Like a salsa, I shimmied closer as the waves receded, and flirted backwards up the beach as the foam rolled back toward me. The current swirled at my feet, and I twirled gracelessly in the uneven wet sand. As the sea foam pirouetted around me, I pushed curling ripples of my own with my pointed toes.
I scooped up healing sea water and soaked my hair with it, feeling the cold droplets running down my back as I danced. I drew more water into my hands and raised them above my head, letting the icy little streams dance themselves down past my elbows and shoulders, sporadic drips like soft rain on my wet hair.

For a fleeting moment I realized that anyone watching would think I’d gone crazy, and in a way I had – I was letting go of all the constraints I had succumbed to this week, this life.
I laughed more, and began to spin in circles, allowing myself to become as dizzy as I wanted. I tipped over into the sand where I remained, laughing and rolling deeper into the warm sand.
Thank you, Mother Earth.
Color me Cleansed.

*************

Well, we all know “tragedy is comedy misunderstood” (Shakespeare), so come on out for my comedy show at the pawn shop owner’s BBQ joint in the Pawn Stars plaza, Wednesday night, September 21st!
Comedy is so cathartic.
See you then!

I’m sitting here in the desert thinking about where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going, and this entry is what’s on my mind. I promise this isn’t that sneaky “sponsored content” crap (although I wish it could be, I’d sell out in an instant if someone was buying what I’m selling, haha), but it will get pretty darn personal in regard to my body image and emotional states throughout my life, and I will be talking a bit about a fitness regimen called S Factor that has really helped me grow as a person and has changed my entire life, even though I have never actually done more than take the Intro class a ton of times with coupons – they actually don’t even have a fitness studio out here in Las Vegas, but I have an Intro Workout DVD at least. I’ve mentioned it a lot, and wanted to talk more about it before in hopes that it will bring some of you epiphanies as well, but I was worried about how it would be received. But I feel the need to purge this truth and shout it from rooftops, so I hope you enjoy and can learn from or maybe relate to “the struggle”:

In my early twenties I was working at Disneyland and went with some fellow Cast Members to audition for Universal Studios for the first time. I dressed for Fiona, but let my make-up suggest Marilyn (I still didn’t believe that I could truly hold a candle to being good enough to play her, but I had seen some of their Marilyns and felt it was worth letting the fantasy play out). To my surprise, they kept me as a Marilyn!
I made it all the way to the very end of the call-backs, where I was told I hadn’t made the final cut. When I asked if it was something I could work on, I was told, “You’re a beautiful girl, but Marilyn was very much a woman.”
Cryptic as that may be, it did make sense and was a pretty deep thing for a casting director to tell an auditioner. You may have a pretty good idea of who I am NOW, but at the time….
The more I thought about it (because we actors do tend to fixate on what we “should have” done or said for days after an important audition), the more I realized this – I had lived away from my parents for a few years, and had held down jobs and had fleeting relationships… but I was still a virgin, in more ways than the obvious definition. I hadn’t yet truly lost anyone, or truly felt that I needed to be the source of my own strength. I hadn’t yet had my heart broken. I hadn’t really lived.
Also, I was very thin and practically shapeless, as far as hourglasses are concerned. An ex from the time even called me “Stringbean,” a mean nickname for a girl in her twenties! I had been modeling and dancing for yeeeears, but hadn’t yet discovered S Factor, and was very unfamiliar with my body and honestly had no idea how to move like a woman. I was still incredibly nervous and uncomfortable when it came to my own body, and I was still allowing this bred-and-nurtured insecurity control everything from how I bent to pick up dropped items to how I spoke. I toughened myself up like a tomboy in an attempt to ward off potential bullies – baggage I had carried around since the fourth grade (I switched to a new school in seventh grade just to stop the torture I was getting from the girls at school). Kids in high school even thought I might be a lesbian because I acted so hard-shelled and was still afraid of boys! It was pretty clear that I was the latest of late bloomers. At twenty-one or twenty-two, I worried that maybe this was as filled-out as I was going to get.
(Funny Side Note, in case you’re a young and wondering girl: I even read somewhere that the little bumps around a nipple will go away when the breast is done developing. Yeah, umm, that’s not real. Those are pretty much there forever. Breasts stop growing when they feel like it, and they fluctuate endlessly forever. Sorry, you’ll never buy a bra and have it fit perfectly every time until you die.)
Conversely, Marilyn was VERY filled-out, and had lived more than perhaps anyone her age should have had to. She had lost people, almost from the very beginning of her life. She had serious relationships early on in her life, being married at 16, but she too had trouble connecting to others, particularly to women. She may have learned backwards lessons about her body too, though a very opposite kind of backwards than I had.
Not knowing the future of my own physical and emotional growth, my optimism of ever playing Marilyn waned. I’ve always lived by Steve Martin’s mantra (“Luckily, persistence is a great substitute for talent.”), so I continued to audition at Universal every other year or so, but the farthest I ever got was another final call-back where the new casting director had the final two of us wear Marilyn-esque dresses and full make-up, with the Park’s wig. We had to interact in character with invisible Park guests of all ages and pose for a few invisible photos, and sing “Happy Birthday,” of course.
The other girl came out of the audition room with a sullen look and said to me, “At least it was a good experience.” I felt nervous, but mostly confident as I went in for my turn. I felt like I was doing well and did my best to listen and follow direction. The new CD just happened to be a former Disneyland Cast Member who played villains, so I thought I had an “in.” The audition went well and I made them laugh and smile, and as I reached for the door knob I thought, “I’ve got this!”
Then the CD called out to me, “Ashley, it says here you worked at Disneyland? What did you do there?” I was a little shocked she didn’t remember me, especially since there had been days I had hosted in Town Square and DCA where she WAS. My mouth has never been on my side – I heard myself joke, “I hosted YOU?”
The two other casting directors erupted into laughter, and the main CD looked mortified. I cringed inside. After a beat, she said, “Oh! Of course! I hardly recognize you with the wig and the make-up on…” I gave her the “out” and said, “That’s a good thing! That means I’m doing something right, haha….” and she excused me from the room.
They never called to tell me I didn’t get it.
A friend at the Park told me about the other girl starting her training, and how shocked they were that I didn’t get it.
I’m guessing the “not a woman yet” thing was no longer the issue this time?

I discovered S factor around 2007 thanks to Groupon, and a beautiful description about how it was less about “pole dancing” and more about body image and learning to be comfortable in your own skin and embracing what you look like, while moving toward fitness and improving yourself inside and out. It echoed a sense of feminine community I had missed out on, having just an older brother growing up and being so bullied by other females that I had all but written off being friends with any girls (unless they were tomboys like me).
S Factor taught me that I hadn’t lost that little girl deep down, and really illustrated just HOW far behind she had become in her development!! My inner feminine power had been stunted, and after a bad relationship she had even been hurt and taught terrible, backwards lessons.
S Factor has no mirrors, to keep us from judging ourselves and the way we look or move. It trains an innate belief in yourself that you don’t need to question yourself at every turn, or wonder what others are seeing when they look at you – it’s only what you FEEL that matters. The instructors are there to make sure you’re doing the moves the safe, correct way, and the other girls are there right beside you learning along with you, and cheering jubilantly for you when you try something for the first time or do something well.
It’s a safe place, where you can find acceptance, endless encouragement and love from fellow females of all shapes and ages, from all different backgrounds. It’s amazing. S Factor is the first place I’ve ever felt that bond, and I have since noticed that it’s wherever good people are – at a new job, in travel, in a class! I have been able to cultivate deep, lasting friendships with girls who I hope will be in my life forever! I have opened myself up to the possibility of friendship with people I never would have trusted for a moment without even realizing it, and I am so grateful that I did.
Still not feeling like an exhibitionist in this personal transformation, I followed the DVD privately at home when I was alone. It cleared my head, and my cat loved that I was rolling around on “her” floor. She’d come lay under me while I did the push-up type “cat-cow roll,” which was appropriate, and to this day (even though Kiki is no longer here) I send out kisses on every dip toward the mat, and remember rubbing my nose against her belly fur as I circled down.

As you already know, I did finally start portraying Marilyn professionally. I had to do it myself, but I now had the confidence and strength to JUST DO IT without worrying what anyone thought of me. I had become confident enough to chase after a good man (yes, he made me chase him), and just before we were married he gave me his full support and encouragement to go for it and play Marilyn. He took photos of me in costume in our backyard, and here I am six years later, having played Marilyn everywhere form here to Europe, and even on television in China a few times. I discovered that the Marilyn community is as loving and supportive as the S Factor femme! I have made so many friends through her (RIP Bronni Bakke, you gorgeous joker). Marilyn has also connected me with people who have hired me as myself for many other projects. My entire world has opened up, and I have gotten to do SO MANY fun and exciting things!! Other characters followed, like Lucy and Jeannie… I even started performing as a princess independently of the Parks – three years ago TODAY, as it so happens!
(It deems being mentioned that the “princessing” community is yet another strongly-bonded group!)
There is no way to say with a straight face that I owe all of everything to an Intro workout. But that class came to me at a turning point in my life, where a realization flipped the way I looked at the world. That flip might be the best thing that ever happened to me, and I hope that by reading this you can accept yourself the way you are and start working toward being even more wonderful and radiant than you already are – and you never know what someone else’s struggle is <3

xo