Another Acting Rant

I read something recently that made me think about acting. I have had a tough year this year in "the Business". Mainly I wasn't involved in it in almost anyway for the past year. And I am frustrated and angry and I'm thinking "if I quit what else could I do?"

This article was about quitting. It's easy to quit. You just stop. If you can walk away from whatever you were doing and never think of it again, you are golden. People quit because of frustration, defeat, anger, they just can't take it anymore. I had a lot of those feelings this year. I'm weary. It's been a tough year for me in general.

But the thing is, and as arrogant as this sounds, I'm good. I'm a good actor. I have been in some shit projects where people told me I was the only good thing. They were my friends, but if I was crap, my friends would tell me.

I auditioned for a project at ILM years ago. I was in a motion capture suit on a blue soundstage. The only thing seen of me was my face. I did the audition to the air. A long monologue to someone that would be added digitally to the scene if I was cast. At my feet was a sound guy laying on the floor holding a boom mic, that was the only place he could be to get my voice. I did the scene a few times. While the director looked at the playback the guy at my feet looked at me and said, "That was really good. When Patrick Swayze was here doing Ghost, they had to clear the room." He couldn't do what I did because there were people around. I was surprised by the compliment. Never thought to clear a room. It's my job to be able to do what I need in any situation. I don't see the crew. Being on the boards probably helped me there. You need an audience.

I'm good. And I put up with all the suffering and heartache, sacrificing so much because I know I'm good. I just need more of a chance. That's the thing that sucks about acting. You need other people to do your art. Writers don't need it, painters & sculptors don't need other people to do their art. Acting is collaborative. you need other people to make it happen. And the last name of Sheen, Bridges, or Baldwin wouldn't hurt.

Nietzsche Year

That which does not kill me... Makes me want to give up in frustration, sit on my couch and watch television until I die. Not quite the quote from Nietzsche, hunh? But apropos for this year that is ending. Since I am generally a private person I thought I'd put a soul bearing post on my blog.

By overwhelming consensus 2009 seemed to suck for most everyone I know. The only good thing about it is that it is almost over. For me this past year has been my toughest ever in my life.

1. The economy sucked and messed up the balancing act in the work I do. Events were cancelled or were downsized. Commercials were not being made. I made 1/3 less money than I did the two previous years. Which made for very difficult times and some amazing tap dancing to pay my bills.

2. I lost my SAG health insurance because I didn't make the required amount to qualify because of the crappy economy and the commercials were not being made. I have to find insurance on my own. Having done it before, let me tell you, it ain't cheap.

3. April 18th my foot was injured. I was told originally it was just a sprain by my GP. Wrong. It's much more than that and it will require surgery at some point in the future. But since I have no insurance as of tomorrow, and may have a hard time getting insurance as this might be a pre-existing condition... There's more to this story. But the various options depress me somewhat.

4. Career. Acting. Well, other than doing one play in the Spring, there was no career. I found a manager in March. She got me one audition in the time I have been represented by her. For voice over stuff, I sent demos out twice this year. (You have no idea how glacially slow agents in the VO world are.) Got to read for one, but that went nowhere.

5. Lonely. This year I have felt acutely alone. I don't mind being by myself, but I have been feeling very alone. Dating in LA is weird. Actresses are weird, and usually all I meet. It's kind of funny, I found the women in Norway much more attractive than here in LA. I'll figure it out at some point. Mail order Norwegian bride maybe...

Good- Bye 2009. this year will be remembered. And very little of it will be good.

Christmas Tradition

For the past 3-4 years when I go home to Phoenix for Christmas a good friend tries to kill me. It's a bit of a tradition. I'll explain.

My friend Terry is the most fit person you might ever meet. His heart rate is around 60 beats a minute, he mountain bikes, and is a helicopter pilot in the Army. And when we are both in town we go up Camelback Mountain. In the middle of a very flat Phoenix is a mountain. There are 2 paths to get up it. It takes about 45 minutes to get up the long path. But it's about a mile and a half climb up a mountain. Not easy. (The pictures are from last year.)

This year because of my foot which was injured in April, I was not able to make it up the mountain. This pissed me off. My ego, which sometimes gets me into trouble for shit like this (i.e. trying to keep up with the super fit Terry.), REALLY did not want to quit. We were over half way up. My ankle/foot wasn't coping well with the angles and the loose rocks. It was hurting me enough that my common sense made me call it off. I knew it was getting to the HARD part. And if getting up was this hard, getting down would be worse.

So I quit. I don't generally quit any challenge. If I made it up Camelback, I would be paying for it later, and especially on the way down.

I'd like my old, functional foot back. Please.

Caps and Butts

I find sometimes that when something ends with a girl I want to drop her a note just to clarify things. Either feelings or why I think things went totally wrong.

There is one girl I made out with for 4 hours at a party (I was Zeus, in character, it was my job to seduce women.). I thought she had my number (it was on a business card that said, "Zeus, King of the Gods.) but she never called. Then someone asked for this girl if it was ok to give my email address. Yes! Those who know me know it's not a simple address. If it's not written down 90% of people will get it wrong. I saw her at a play. I wanted to say hello in the lobby but got such a FUCK OFF vibe I proceeded to fuck off.

But isn't that the way? We want a nice simple cap to a situation. And situations like that are never very simple. They are, by their very nature, messy. What is said or not said or perceived, even if it never happened, will just fuck you up.

I think dogs have it easier. You go around sniffing strange butts, if you like the smell of a butt you mount it.

Politics Unusual

I'm disappointed in the politics of healthcare reform. Mainly because there is no more reform in the bill that is being eviscerated in the Senate right now. It's not just the Republicans who are doing it because they have lost any power they had and the only thing left to them is obstruction. If you can't do what you want to, prevent any good from being done by the other party.

It has become a political shell game. Leiberman is the biggest asshole in this mess. He has held up what would be the 60 votes needed to pass reform because he can. That is fucking criminal. That little shit should be recalled right now. Not because he is a weasel. Actually that is the reason to recall him. He is not working for the people who hired him by voting him into office, he is working for his ego. The President and all of Congress should take him out to the political woodshed and beat the political tar out of him. How Dare HE?

The bill as it stands right now has no public option, not lowering of medicare age requirements, basically nothing that would be reform. It forces people to buy into insurance companies products or get fined. Great boon for the health industry.

Harry Reid should put all the things that the bill should have back in and let it go for a vote. Put in the public option and everything else that Republicans and pansy ass hold out Democrats didn't like and let it get voted on. And when it fails go on television and tell people who don't have insurance that it is the fault of these Senators and Representatives listed here. You want healthcare, then these people need to be removed from office.

Mr Obama I voted for you. "Yes We Can" has become "What The Fuck?" You are the President. Play some fucking HARD BALL. And if you are a one term President, it won't be because you were a pussy. Sir, don't be so worried about keeping your job that you forget to do your job.

I watch The West Wing on Bravo all the time, and I would love to have Josiah Bartlett as my President. And why do I care so much? My health insurance thru SAG ends in 13 days.

Overheard

I overheard the neighbor from upstairs, the one being evicted, as she walked up the stairs with her 2 dogs and the drunk husband she kicked out.

"Better hurry up or Brad will kill us all." She said mockingly.

I didn't know I had that option.

Oops

I, kind of, accidentally, somehow, unintentionally, out of curiousity, cyber-stalked someone. It was a girl I was stupid for a long time ago. The subject of the post from last December called "Empty." I was looking at Facebook today and saw her on a friend's profile as a friend. Just out of curiousity I clicked it. All her info showed up. This past week FB has changed it's privacy settings. You have to opt out of searches on Google and re-do all the settings. This girl was never big on Myspace or FB so she probably never checks her own profile. And that's why I was able to look at her pages.

She's engaged.
Well, good for her. But I still don't care. I don't know if it's to the guy from last year. It didn't say.

It was a curiousity thing not a pining for her thing. Haven't seen her in a year. Don't think of her hardly ever. But I still felt a little weird looking. What would I find? How would I feel? Turns out I didn't feel much. And since I have a somewhat semi-private, not completely anonymous forum to vent, I posted here. You'll let me know if this is "too much information", yes?

So much info is out on the internet about you it is scary. Once it's out there you never get it back. Like this post. Whoosh!!!! (That is the sound of information escaping...Forever.)

Destiny

I met someone recently at work who was very religious and volunteered her beliefs quite freely. I enjoy hearing about people's beliefs and listened. One thing she said a few times I found interesting.

God had planned her entire life. Even before she was born, everything had been mapped out. In fact, God has planned out everyone's Life.

Really?

So when I was driving home from Santa Monica in the rain this week, determined not to get on the 405 going north, every choice for every turn I made, dictated by either traffic or whim was pre-determined by God before I was even born? Hmmm.

I have a hard time believing that God has pre-determined every move, every thought of every Life of the 6.6 billion people currently alive on the planet. Every person? Even the ones who don't believe in the God she believes in? Muslims? Hindus? Jews? Wiccans? They all believe in something but not exactly what the other believes in. Every person? The people who are serial killers? Terrorists? Child molesters? That seems like a perverse deity to create lives with such a destiny. To cause havoc and pain on the rest of the 6.6 billion of us. That's kind of horrific.

If everything were planned by God, Allah, or whomever, what woud be the purpose of Life? He wrote the book of EVERYTHING, but still let's it run it's course? If everything is pre-determined then isn't Life merely and academic exercise? Redundant?

I like to think I am in charge of my Destiny. I choose, however right or wrong, whether I turn right or left based upon my own intution and the conditions of the 405. Do I make the right choices all the time? Certainly not.

If God planned each Life, every moment, wouldn't that make him a big control freak?

A Journey

2 Billion years ago in a volcanic furnace of creation a towering mountain of igneous rock was erected soaring over the landscape. It slowly cooled making a mixture in the rock, flecks of silver and veins of quartz shooting thru the black stone.

Time passed. The elements; water, wind, heat, and cold began working their incremental dance, an unending wearing down of the ponderous mountain born of fire. A small hairline crack forms in the surface of the cliff face letting water seep in. The cold freezes the water expanding the crack. The heat expands the rock creating room for the wind to tug at the crack. After 300,000 years the crack has epanded and gravity tears a huge slab of the cliff face away from the mountain. As it falls it tumbles breaking into more pieces, smaller peices that come to rest in the raging river that cuts it's way thru the valley in between the many goliaths of hard rock.

The water bucks and splashes around the intruders because it's force cannot be denied. Over millenia the relentless water inexorably wears away the jagged edges. Smooting the boulders, breaking them down into smaller pieces. The boulders become smoother, smaller; from one rock became many thousands.

Then a year ago a company collects the small smooth river rocks. They are packaged and sold to a woman.

The journey ends with these small beautiful rocks; greys and blacks shot thru with veins of quartz at the bottom of a urinal at the Luxe Hotel with me pissing on them.

What will the # be?

Tiger Woods, as of this blog, has had 11 women come forward to say they had affairs with him. Some rather long affairs. 1-2 years in some instances.

Wow. I'm kind of shocked. He always seemed like a good guy. A good family man. Not just a player. Player not just golf, but "don't hate the Player, hate the game" kind of player.
The guy has got a smoking hot wife. And he goes and has a dozen affairs. Or 37. Who knows how many women will eventually show up?

As a brand, he is done for a few years. Maybe permanently. The sponsors will not want to be associated with someone of such questionable morals. He made 1 billion dollars since he started. Hope it's invested well.

So why did this happen? Well, I imagine that celebrity has something to do with it. The temptation and the opportunity to stray he had has got to be amazing. Power, Money and Sex go together. In the history of mankind, they always have.

So he should divorce his wife. Then he can sleep with as many women as he wants. He won't have the endorsements he has or had, but at least it won't be as lurid as his life is now.

Kind of sad. How far the mighty have fallen.

Crazy Moon

I saw the vampire sequel the other night. I'd been seeing so many good movies lately, I thought I'd change it up a bit.

I'm not a teenage girl, but is a guy taking off his shirt showing his 6 pack abs really scream worthy? Evertime the wolf boy took off his shirt, girls screamed. The same with the moody vampire who can't find a comb; and his abs looked painted on like they used to do in baywatch.

The script was average. The movie was inundated with pregnant pauses and a lot of eyebrow acting. Watching an actor being moody and pensive gets annoying after 3 minutes. And would you look at the girl you are doing the scene with for Christ sake? The girl? Holy crap, if I were her dad I would have said, "Honey, we are going to get you some prozac. From Costco. Waking every night screaming? That would push me over the edge. And why did these 2 guys fight over her? she wasn't that interesting. As a food source for a monster, maybe. (I've been a vampire. Twice. Go out and kill something you fucking pansies!) But really, this movie made $500,000,000 so far? Damn.

Want to know a good movie? Here's my list: Up in the Air; District 9; An Education; The Last Station; The Informant; The Hurt Locker; 500 Days of Summer; Up; The Young Victoria; Sherlock Holmes.
A lot of these were total surprises. Some I didn't expect to like and really enjoyed. Some I knew nothing about and was pleasantly surprised.

So there you go. See you at the movies. Or in my livingroom watching DVD screeners.

Party Crashers

The White House party crashers are kind of funny. And yet I am appalled that they got into the party. What was the Secret Service thinking? Specifically the guy who first waved them thru? I bet his new posting is in Greenland.

I saw an interview with the married couple on the Today show this morning. Matt Lauer asked some very straight forward questions. And the Salahis answered everything like they were politicians with such rambling circular answers that you forgot the original questions. I kept thinking to myself, "that didn't answer the question." Matt should have pressed the Salahis for a real answer. What happened to journalism? I'm not really too concerned how they feel. I would like the truth. Which would probably be hard to get since I'd bet they were coached by a lawyer.

They are fame seekers like the Balloon Dad last month. It's crazy what reality television has done to the world. The crazy people are doing stupid things and thinking it's alright. I'm sure the secret service will change it's policies for things like this. No ticket, no entrance. Try to bullshit get escorted out. These two people need to be arrested. And when they lie to Congress this week, they need to face some consequences for their actions. Their proof, the emails they say they have, are not going to hold up.

Arthritic Joints

I got the final word on my foot, for the moment. The injury is a bit more involved than I originally thought. The fix?

Nothing...

for now. The fix would be surgery to fuse 3 bones together. This would return the foot to the way it worked. However, this won't be happening anytime soon. The doctor said the time to do the surgery would be when my foot is bugging me so much I will be saying "enough is enough!" And limping all the time.

Brilliant plan. So in the meantime I willl have custom made orthontics molded for my foot. And I will just cope. Fuck. I only limp for a few steps in the morning when I first get up. I am very aware of how I move on it. Fuck.

It would be nice to run if I feel like it, and not have to worry about being in pain later.

Fuck.

Acting

I am on the SAG Nominating Committee. I get to vote for the performances that are in the SAG awards. This means I get to see a lot of movies for free. I missed a number of things this past year. The BIG movies. Transformers 2, Terminator Salvation. Paul Blart, Mall Cop. The movies I am getting to see are smaller and a bunch are really good.

Watching movies or anything when you are an actor causes a very strange reaction. At least for me it does. I look at movies as someone who is in the business, and I see the parts I could have played. I swear to you, in my head I think, "I could have done that." "Why didn't I get to audition for that?" The simple answer to that is I need kick ass representation. Which I don't have...

In the meantime, I invite people to come see movies with me. I love that ther are no previews, no food or drinks. The movie starts at the time listed. No fuss or hoopla. It's like popping a dvd in and watching at home...

Hemp Heads

Once again I was accosted by a marijuana user advocating it's legalization. This was someone I was working with 100 feet in the air on an I-beam, so I couldn't really get away from him. Nice guy, but I don't want him to rig while stoned.

He was telling me about how useful it is; how it can be used for all these medicinal purposes. That the brain has a certain part that all it does is be effected by marijuana. How he can drive an hour after smoking wihout being impaired--no matter how much he smoked. In fact, peope who have smoked marijuana are more careful driving than people who are stone sober.

In my head I'm thinking, "Really? Really?" The research and studies he is quoting are not in his footnotes, so I think the data is rather anecdotal. Something that is passed down from stoner to stoner. What may have been studied is lost with the "Dude!" factor. The brain thing? Evolution created a part of the brain that it's only use is to be effected by THC? Wow, I guess I'm only using 9% of my brain then. The driving thing is bullshit. Flat out bullshit. People who have smoked dope before driving are probably more careful because, A.) they are stoned, and B.) they are paranoid they are going to get picked up by the cops.

It has always seemed to me that stoners are constantly, desperately trying to convince people that smoking dope is not a bad thing. They also come up with other uses for hemp; paper, clothing, rope, oils, the list is rather long and gets a bit absurd. And I tend to think they thought up all these uses for hemp while they were stoned and giggling.

They also say that alcohol has worse effects on people and driving. It most ceratinly does effect driving, reason and judgement. But also there are laws that put your drunk ass in jail if you drink and drive. Marijuana also effects your drving reason and judgement. Eat a whole box of twinkies while you have the munchies and see what happens.

Last time I smoked dope was at a bachelor party 9 years ago. A totally hot nude stripper offered me a toke. Since I have a rule agreeing to whatever a hot nude woman says, I acquiesced. That rule has generally garnered positive outcomes.

Do I care if people smoke dope? No. Don't drive. Hit my car and I will be very cross. Most dope smokers are quite harmless. They sit on the couch happily eating marshmellows. Just don't preach to me about how it is a misunderstood drug. People who are tweakers don't advocate Meth. Same with coke heads, and heroin users. It's just the pot heads.

Blasphemy, Blasforyou

Some people in a major religion with 1.6 billion followers, some very extreme, want to criminalize blasphemy.

Well, This is very difficult to do on a worldwide scale considering there are 6.6 billion people in the world. How do you criminalize thought? Who is the group that decides what is blasphemy? Are there different standards for different religions? Are some more tolerant of the freedom of speech than some of the more sensitive? How much prison time do you get for blasphemy? Is the punishment for written blasphemy cutting off the hand that offends? Spoken blasphemy, cutting out a tongue?

Who is the fucking Hall Monitor? Hunh? What about Freedom of Speech? This Right is what makes America great. If the people in this religion think they are likely to subvert what this country is founded upon, they have another blasphemous thing coming.

You can believe anything you want to believe. I'll believe what I want to believe. I suggest you lighten the fuck up. Live and let live. If God, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, Odin doesn't like what the fuck you say about them, it's in their own hands to exact vengeance. They are all powerful, right? They don't need your help.

3-D Movies

I just saw A Christmas Carol. The lastest version from Disney with Jim Carrey. It is completely computer animated and 3-D. It's pretty cool. The thing that made it a bit jarring for me was the 3-D stuff. So much of it was planned to use the technology that it was obtrusive. Does the camera really need to pass thru a stream of falling peanuts, or the Christmas reef? I don't think it does. Just because you have the ability to do so doesn't mean you should. Doing so kept throwing me out of the movie. And it happened all the time. The speeding thru the snow so it hit the glasses... That's fine if I'm skiing, but give me a break.

I recommend it, but the 3-D thing might make you crazy.

Scientific Break Thru!

Scientists have created a computer that simulates the brain of a cat.
Really? How does this manifest? The computer ignores you? It brushes up against you but won't let you touch the keyboard? It smacks around a ball of digital yarn? It suddenly decides it needs to be in the next room IMMEDIATELY? More important, how would you know for certain you had accomplished such a task?

So, some brainiac has created a computer that thinks totally illogically and selfishly. One that is distracted easily by birds or fish. One that attacks your moving feet under the covers as you sleep.

To what purpose? How does this improve the world? Making a computer even more confounding than they sometimes are? This time could be better spent. Doing, uh, smart... stuff...

Snippets

I don't have anything in particular to blog about. So I will do a few small things.

How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberry, by Adrian Colesberry. This is a book by a friend of mine I know from doing extra work. Years ago he would be writing with a stylus on a small hand held device. (I don't think anyone has them anymore.) One day during a lull on a beer commercial I asked him what he was doing. "Writing a book" was the reply. This is an impressive task. And even more astounding is he completed it and it was published. Lots of people start books. Few finish. Fewer get published. This will be a fun read. Congrats Adrian. He was always kind enough to come to my plays and say nice things afterward. (even if they were merely ok.)

Screenings. I have been going to a lot of screenings lately because I am in the SAG Nominating Committee. Which means I get notices in the mail about lots of movies; some I have seen; some I haven't seen; some I have never heard of. When the notices come in I tape them to my livingroom wall and cirlce the ones I want to see. I have a 7' x 7' portion of my wall covered with notices. So I have been going to 5 movies a week lately. Last time I was in the SAG Nom Com, I had a job that kept me so busy and so exhausted so I saw only one movie. I'm making up for lost time. Anyone wanna see a flick?

Muppet Burlesque. You read that correctly. I went to see a friend of mine perform in Muppet Burlesque at the Monday Night Tease. It was funny and weird. I was afraid it would wreck my childhood, but I had in excess of 25 more years it couldn't touch...

Paper Clutter. I went looking for last year's tax return. Didn't find it. I have a good decade worth of paper clutter in my apartment. I have a shredder for the junk mail and use that, but to clear out this kind of detritus I would need a industrial shredder. Or a flamethrower. I will clear out a lot of this stuff, but it will probably kill the shredder I have. Need a fireplace. Heat, light, and destruction! Awesome.

Wild Things

I saw the movie, "Where The Wild Things Are" recently. It has had me thinking a bit. My friend Amy said the monsters on the island were emotions. So armed with this knowledge or thought I viewed the movie. Now everybody is probably familiar with the book, but I hadn't read it since I was a kid. While walking thru B&N the other day I picked it up and read it again. It took all of 3 minutes. Like most kids books it is short, with lots of pictures and the story is really about 20 pages long. Tough to make a 101 minute movie out of 20 pages. And I do think some of it showed.

Max is a wild out of control kid and runs away from home. he finds a boat and sails to an island of misfit monsters. Amy's take was the monsters are emotions. All the negative, bad, destructive emotions. A lot of the ones that are making Max rebel. The emotions run wild & free, and build things and destroy things. Max becomes the king and learns there are things that just can't be fixed. At the end Max decides to stop trying to be an adult and go home to be a kid once again. His mom greets him with hugs and smiles and dinner. The monster Max is gone replaced by a better little boy.

Hm... It was a simple ending and I might be thinking about it wrong, but I had a hard time buying Max's redemption. It was too movie simple. There was growth and an unspoken epiphany, but like all movies, wrapped it up in a nice package.

I find that I have an island where my monsters run wild and free. And they are destructive and lonely like the monsters Max found... I'm going to probably always have these monsters. I just need to make them better monsters...

Wackiness continues

My upstairs neighbor is a liar. She went out of town for 4-5 days but left her dogs in the apartment. The husband she kicked out of the apartment lives down the block now and would come by 3 times a day to walk the dogs. But in the meantime, they were left alone and barked quite a bit. I took notes and sent the times and duration to the landlords for the court case they are doing to evict her. I thought the barking was strange since she was jumping on the dogs as soon as they opened their mouths because of the eviction notice she received on her door. So having them bark was weird. Also, I didn't hear her activity at all. I deduced she was gone.

After she returned, she sent a packet of letters to the landlords saying she was out of town and the dogs were not in the apartment for those 4-5 days. This is a BIG LIE. But there are letters from 4 people saying the dogs were with them in some apartment down the street. The people are lying for her. In court where this is all going to end up, it's called PERJURY. Which comes with fines and jail time.

Also, she included a letter from her daughter claimng she lives with her. No, that is a lie too. After she got married she kicked her teenage daughter out. This was "her time now". And the daughter was sent to live with her dad in Utah. The daughter is now in Tucson with her grandmother, my neighbor's mom. The daughter wrote a letter to the landlords saying there was an altercation about an alarm clock. And I was obscene to her.

There was an altercation about a clock radio in 1995. It would go off every morning between 5:30 and 6 am. It blasted Radio Disney for the next hour to an hour and a half. I complained. The neighbor screamed at me after this altercation "If you don't like apartment living, Fucking move!" Did I ever confront the daughter, no. Would I ever be obscene to a child? Absolutely not.

The thing is, that altercation has absolutely nothing to do with her being evicted over her noisy dogs. She is trying anything and everything to not get evicted. Having people submit letters that are lies is a bad way to do anything in the court system. I just hope the judge doesn't buy this load of crap.

This is all part of a long history with this neighbor. And, Friends, if I never invited you over, this is the reason why... It's a great apartment, great location, great rent, horrible evil neighbor.

Shootings

In the past 2 days there have been 2 shootings. One in Texas at Fort Hood, and one in Florida. The shooter in Texas was shot by an officer and wounded. But the thing that I find funny is this guy is the "alleged shooter". It took 4 bullets from the female officer to stop the guy. But because the nutjob didn't die, he is "alleged." If the nutjob had died, he would be the "slain gunman."

Yes, everyone is "presumed innocent until proven guilty", but this is pretty cut and dried. However, if the news were to call the wackjob a "gunman" without the "alleged" part, lawyers would try some legal bullshit to have the case dismissed or moved because the jury pool is tainted. Well, the jury pool is tainted because the guy lived. The jury pool is tainted because he killed 12 people and wounded 31 and did not die when the cop shot him.

My advice for his lawyers, plead out. This is Texas, pal, they love to kill people there. And you just shot up a bunch of patroitic volunteers. There isn't a whole lot of chance you can get out of this. You can try to plead insanity, but when you shout, "Allahu Akbar" before you pull the trigger, you become a terrorist.

Paid!

Yesterday I drove 100 miles round trip to get the check for the work I did in September. Read the entry below. Hopefully I don't have to do that again for the 2 other invoices that are pending with them...

My Strange Life

I lead a strange financial life. I work doing lots of things that pay, sometimes, pretty well. But I don't get a check with any kind of regular schedule. And this makes me crazy on occassion. Currently I am waiting on a check from a company whose policy is to cut a check 30 days after the invoice is delivered by email. 30 days is a long time to wait for money. It's been 39 days. I have a stack of bills to go out and nothing in the bank to cover them. I'm pretty new dealing with this company. In fact this is from my first job with them, that aside, FUCKING PAY ME!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know if this is typical, but to all the accountants who work for them DO YOUR GODDAM JOB! If they only have one accountant, then get this dude some help. This company's payroll from some jobs can be 100 people. This shouldn't be brain surgery, cut the fucking check.

One company I knew of used to have the entire payroll on direct deposit. By doing this the money in the accounts could accrue interest until the last possible minute, before it was all deposited in the employees respective accounts. Is this what is happening with this fucking deliquent company? Fuck.

Lately, I am racing from check to check and trying not to have the bills go horribly wrong. This month I'm fucked. Sigh...

Facebook #4 (the rant continues)

This huge interconnection machine called Facebook has made me feel even more disconnected. I look at the status updates and news feeds and they don't seem that earthshaking to me. It's all kinds of trivial things that we all do in life being glorified, set apart like it is something unique and special. We all go to the store to buy food. We all have car repair bills and they suck. It seems FB is a big place to commiserate about the thing that is life.

Yes, there are occassional funny things. Like today, my friend's babysitter confused KY jelly for diaper rash cream. That is the funniest thing I have heard of. (Hi Di.) But knowing what someone is making for dinner is not too interesting to me.

I was also saddened to find out that someone I sent a friend request to a month ago was friending this person or that person. My unanswered friend request went out a month ago. And apparently when a request is pending for so long, their news feeds show up on your news feeds. Not status or anything else, just who they friended. Great. Nice to know I am not really that important, or a friend. I rescinded the request. Guess it's one less person for the Christmas list. Because I am a sucker I may friend them again. But I bet I'll feel the same way if the request is ignored.

In this world where I strive to stay connected in person with people, technology and whatnot creates something to interconnect people all over the world, but without ever leaving the house. I find that sad.

I also don't post things very often in the status space or on a news feed. You would like to know people are reading it and get comments for being profound or witty. But the things I would like to post, on second thought seem trite or lame or worst of all, not funny. And FB isn't a place to get deep. It's the skin of the teeth for content it seems. Pretty pictures for empty souls.

See? That was kind of deep.

Capitol Records

Google launched a new music product as part of their search engine. Don't really know what it is or how it works. I worked the launch party at Capitol Records building on Vine. That iconic round building just as you exit the 101 freeway. This is where singers and bands for the past 53 years have recorded.

Sinatra, the Beatles, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, the Beach Boys, Bobby Darin, the list is long and amazing. The hallways are lined with large photos of the singers I mentioned and more. There are some pictures of the Beatles I have never seen before. It's kind of amazing. The studios look pretty much the same as they do in the pictures. It was cool to me to be walking the same halls as these Icons of music. Taking a leak in the same bathroom.

The place had a sense of history about it. I don't know if it was real, or something I imbued the place with. It wasn't tricked out and all sleek. The floors were linlolium and looked like the same tile that was laid when the building opened. There are echo chambers built under the building that sound was pumped into to create echo effects. All of which can be done electronically. But think of the math involved in that.

It was cool to see. Like shooting a commercial in the studio where they shot the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. Been there too.

U2: the Good

I love this band. I have for 22 years. I liked them in the early '80s, but Joshua Tree is what pushed me over into Fan status. This last album didn't do much for me, however, but I'll have to go back and listen again.

After the Screaming Bitch disappeared (see the blog entry below) I got to enjoy the show. I loved the lights, I loved the screen. I have worked a lot of concerts but that screen was unique. I love the big songs they have. The ones that you recognize from the first chords. I also enjoyed looking at the crowd. For me, this type of thing is church. That sort of oceanic feeling, of being connected to 100,000 fans all grooving on the same music.

If you watch the band they are having a blast. But who wouldn't? I was onstage with them for a couple concerts, just working tech, but the energy you get from the audience is amazing. The picture is a view of the crowd from where I was. So big a cell phone camera can't encompass the scope of it.

I'm realizing I'm not telling much about the show. I could tell you a set list, but that doesn't tell you how it made me feel to be there. It was great. One of the few bands I would pay to see. Again and again. I was a bit bummed they didn't play "Pride". That is probably my favorite song from their entire career as a band.

A great memory filed away in the unique U2 file in my brain. I should blog some of those... Hm...

U2: The Bad Part

95,000 people were reported to have attended the concert. It's a really huge number when you see it in person. People started arriving at 5 am, according to the radio as we were driving at 4 pm to beat the traffic there. It was like a huge tailgate party in the parking lot, which was really a golf course. We were parked on the greens. It was weird...

Me and my friend Karen found our seats. Section 13, row 51 seats 19 & 20. In front of the stage but in the bleachers. 100 or more yards from the stage. For $56.50 what do you expect? Front of stage standing for 4 hours? (Which would suck.) But much of the singing was out our direction and there was the coolest big screen I have ever seen at a concert.

The crowd was so crazy big that it was insane. Since some of these people had been drinking and smoking dope for hours they were trashed. Which makes people into the biggest assholes around.

Karen and I were boxed in on 3 sides by crowd stereotypes that just made me want to leave. The guy to our left was just young and crazy thrilled to be there. That wasn't so bad. But, dude, when Bono is talking about someone being held under house arrest for the past 20 years, don't yell, "WOOOOO!" Can you even tell me where Burma, also known as Myanmar is?

Below us was 2 couple in their late 40s. The 2 blonde women were cute for their age, but they and one of the husbands was trashed beyond all comprehension. I drink, but when I spend the time and money on something like U2, I want to remember it. They were dancing arhythmically and waving glow sticks around. We nearly got hit by the flailing arms a few times. It was just sloppy and silly.

The worst of the box we were in was direstly behind me. This short girl was certifiably nuts. A screaming banshee BITCH. When the Black Eyed Peas came on she was constantly yelling directly in my ear and singing all the lyrics. I had earplugs in, but this girl cut thru them like a chain saw. I would turn around and look at her when she would do a 30 second yell directly in my ear. How can you hear the music when you are yelling so much? Shut up and LISTEN! When I looked at her once, I turned back around, her hand appeared at the side of my head and hovered there. What the fuck? was she going to hit me? No. "High 5!" I ignored her. I want to you to shut up or die. I'm not going to high 5 you.

Now, she was short. I discovered this when I stood up during Slash playing Sweet Child o' Mine with BEP, and my body completely blocked her view of the stage. This was funny to me. After BEP left the stage, the crew switched around the stage for U2 and I heard this girl bitching about me. "This guy is an asshole." She meant the guy next to me. "This guy is an asshole" meaning me, "And since she is with him, she is an asshole too." I'm sitting directly in front of you. I wanted to turn and say something but refrained. It wouldn't serve a purpose. I can't beat civilty into someone that clueless.

U2 started to play. Everyone stood up. During the first song the metal seat directly behind me started to be pounded. I turned and looked. The bitch was standing on my seat directly behind me stamping her feet and screaming. I gently moved back and she stepped off of the seat I paid for. She went ape shit. She started screaming at me, she was pulled back by the poor guy she was with. She was screaming at him, screaming about me, "fuck" was every other word. Karen said she looked back during the commotion and she saw the guy look at her helplessly. I ignored it as best I could.

The screaming stopped. I don't know where she went, but she went away and never came back. Then I was allowed to enjoy the concert. This girl is her own worst enemy. I'm sure she is posting on her Facebook page that I ruined the concert for her. She is the victim! Maybe, but of her own shitty entitled behavior.

Oh, yeah. Leaving the parking lot took 45 minutes.

Halloween

As an actor I don't get into Halloween like normal people do.

Civilians get all into dressing up and acting out. I do that for a vocation, so I am a bit more mellow about the whole thing. I am a stickler for details, however. If I do a costume I get very precise. When someone I know had a "come as a God party" I was Zeus. I had lightning bolts. I had business cards that said "Zeus, King of the Gods". My phone number was on some of them. Those I handed out to girls. I was Zeus after all. Notorious skirt chaser, to put it mildly.

In my closet I have some great costumes. Superheroes and super villains, samurai, ninja, jedi knights, and Elvis (custom made '68 Comeback special.). So I can just pull something out. But I dont' get all crazy. I don't know. Because I do silly stupid things onstage I don't feel pressure to be crazy at a party. I rarely get crazy at parties. But maybe that's just me.

Women go nuts. I pointed out to one girl that all the choices for women are sexy. Sexy nurse, sexy cop, sexy cavewoman. It seems a bit one sided. Guys don't have the sexy choices. But I really don't know if guys are sexy in the same way as women. I'm still a fan of the sexy alien or any other sexy that a girl wants to put on. I'm a big fan of cleavage.

And for the guys who get dressed up in drag at Halloween. Every year. Uh, you have unresolved issues, I think.

Star Wars in Concert

About 3 weeks back I had a call late Friday afternoon from my friend Jason. He was asking what I was doing that night. A bit of a strange request since he lives in San Diego with his wife and daughter. It being an average Friday, nothing.

He had tickets to see the Music of Star Wars in Concert. Would I like to go? YES! He'd meet me at the Honda Center in Anaheim at 7:30 pm. Cool. I knew the traffic would be bad, so I left around 5:30. It took him probably less time for him to get from La Jolla than it did me to get the 40 miles from North Hollywood to Anaheim.

Jason was late. Me, always early, was outside the arena when the first familiar chords of the theme started. This music is part of my favorite movie. Really one of the first times as a kid I noticed acting as a job. To get paid to do that would be awesome. Still would be awesome!

These chords make my heart pound in my chest, and the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It's a visceral thing. Then the next song was from Episode one. It had the chorus for Darth Maul. I really wanted to be inside there. I could see a tiny bit of the screen thru the curtains. Bright flashes of light and color that accompanied the music.

Jason showed up and we went in. We missed 2 songs. Anthony Daniels, the actor who played C3PO was the narrator. The music was compiled into selections that would highlight a character or specific movie of the 6 Star Wars movies. It was really well crafted. And very fun. In the lobby were props and costumes from the 6 movies. It was cool to see. I expected to run into my friend Reno, who knows almost everything about Star Wars (but I can occassionally still stump him.), and his dad, Howard. They were not there. Reno would have loved it. And corrected the mistakes...

It was a neat show. But it made me realize, this is our classical music now. This is Peter and the Wolf. This is the music of Prokofiev that goes with the narration. But the narration is flashing light on a screen. Does anyone write symphonies anymore? I think the people with that kind of talent for storytelling are doing movie scores.

Overheard at Sky Harbor.

I was sitting at the airport in Phoenix waiting for my delayed flight to arrive and take me back to the Land of LA when I overheard, or rather couldn't help but overhear, a teen-aged girl talking on her cell phone. Now it seems that the advent of cell phones have made the loud talking about private things in public places commonplace. This conversation she was having was about abortion.

People are pro-life or pro-choice according to their beliefs. I'm not too concerned about a person's views. But what I was appalled by was this girl's her lack of information and really poor verbal skills. She said the word "like" every second or third word. I am not the Language Police. I mess up the english language and cuss like a trucker. But to hear her, like, say, like, the poor, like, verbal stop that, like, helps, like, give a person, like, time to form a sentence. That shit bothers me.

I wanted to ask her if, like, she knew, like, just how uneducated she, like, sounds. Because the word "like" is for comparison. This thing is similar to this other thing. It's not meant to be used in such a manner. And when she is talking about a topic such as abortion, it totally made me think she knew nothing about what she was speaking.

For instance: She was asserting that a 4 month old fetus is viable to live outside the mother's womb. Uh, no. Not really. This is taken from webMD: A 16 week old fetus is "4.3 to 4.6 inches from crown to rump and weighs about 2.8 ounces." That is not viable to live outside a mother. Not even with the most incredible premie care would this baby have a good chance of surviving. The lungs are not formed, despite the fact that it has fingernails. Please. If it did live, it would have a host of maladies that extreme premies have to cope with in life. Someone pro-life person told her misinformation and she is out there spreading it.

If you haven't figured it out, I am pro-choice. I have no right to tell anyone what to do with their bodies. I might have an opinion, but you can tell me to shut up. I am pro-children but not in the crazy octo-mom kind of way. I am pro-intellect. Know what you speak of before you open your mouth. Nothing defeats your argument than lack of information, and the word "like".

Friending. (Facebook #3)

I ignored a friend request last week from someone I did theatre with over a decade ago. He had a small meltdown that ended up with him cheating on his wife. Leaving her for the girl he cheated on, marrying her, having 2 kids. He moved up north. Now, I knew all this without having any contact with him. I got this information thru a few people. The general concensus was "Wow, he fucked up his life." Basically the last decade of his life was where he went awry after sleeping with the girl in question.

The thing is, I know who he is, but don't really want to have any contact with him. Don't have much to say to him. Maybe, "what the fuck were you thinking? With what part were you thinking?" But the reality of it is, I don't really care. I don't want to know what to say to him. Does this mean I am a bad person? Well, my upstairs neighbor would say "yes!" (read the previous blog entry.)

I'm not sending friend requests often. And I am careful who I send to. I'm not sending to everyone. It's another platform to IM from as far as I am concerned. I don't have much to say, so my status stays the same for days at a time. It's strange how people are changing their status every 3 hours. I don't find my own life that interesting that I am going to post about it.

Here's an example of a possible post from me. "My ass is sore from sitting on the steel beams at Verizon Ampitheatre." Not that interesting... "Bruised knees from the hard steel in the roof. But I didn't die! Yay!" Or, "Worked in the asbestos snowglobe in Anaheim again. Cough."

I need better wit if I am to stay interesting on FB.

Wackiness

Well, my upstairs neighbor is dealing with the new landlords. Why? Well.... her dogs were going ape shit on Monday night from about midnight to 2:30 am. And to add to the problem she left the apartment with her friends who were visiting and locked the friend's dog in the bathroom for about an hour to keep them all out of mischief. So what does the poor animal do?

Howls, cries, barks, scratches at the bathroom door for an hour. This had my neighbors dogs offering their support by howling and barking too. For the better part of an hour. All 3 dogs were separated from each other and not happy. Animal cruelty, if you ask me. But neighbor cruelty, too.

So I called my manager the next day and complained. That's what they are there for. This type of thing is something the police would refer to animal services. Trust me, I know. This is not my first encounter with this neighbor's animals. And certainly not my first encounter with her...

The manager had their lawyer craft a "3 day or quit" notice. There are a few ways to deal with a notice like that.
1. Explode! Claim to be a victim! The world is against me! (Which for this neighbor, the world, at least my block hates her.)
2. Shut the fuck up and become a church mouse. Never seen, never heard.
3. Uh, can't think of anything. Hmm.

She chose option 1. Big shock. When the dog barked for the first time after getting the 3 day notice, she screamed at it, "No Barking! EVER!" I feel sorry for the dogs... But not the neighbor. I want the landlords to finally evict her. The previous landlord wanted to evict her. But the easer way to deal with her... Sell the building. Seriously. She was a major reason for selling my place. Tells you a lot about her, hunh?

I do think I have a right to some peace and quiet... And if it means she is evicted, please do so quickly.

Hotel secrets

I have access to the backstage areas at hotels when I work. In one place I was waiting for the elevator and noticed the menu for the resturaunt laid out on the wall. What the food was to look like, what the measurements for the recipes were, how much it cost to make the dish, and more importantly, the cost to the customer.

So the bacon and eggs I had for breakfast that cost $13.00, costs $1.50 to make. The Eggs Benedict, for $15.00 costs $.98 to make. I looked at the menu in awe comparing the cost to make it to the price for the consumer. Most every dish was about 10% of the cost to the customer. It was shocking.

But the Hotel does have costs I'm not including in the food. The cost of the land in Tahoe or Beverly Hills, the cost of the building, electricity, management, workers, etc. It all adds up into a price that the hotel and customer finds reasonable. If the customer was unwilling to pay the price, they would turn around after seeing the menu, and go to Dennys. If no one goes to the resturaunt, they change their prices or close.

It's all economics.

Mobile Emissions Testing?

On the way back from Rancho Palos Verdes I was randomly stopped at a mobile emissions testing station at the side of the road. Never heard of such a thing. It's a good road to do it on, one lane in and out basically. However, mobile smog check? Fuck off.

Sobriety checkpoints are fine, they catch drunk drivers. But I was waved to the side after another guy. The other guy was talking to the attendant. I was a bit irked. I just had my smog done last month. Seriously. I passed the first testing. So the guy in front of me gets waved away. I pull up. The attendant said it was a random check. What was the year of my car? I showed him the registration and said I was smogged just last month. My registration was dated 10/3/09.

Do I have time? It takes 10 minutes. No. I don't and shouldn't have to. It was just smogged. They just want to check that the station is doing it's job. Really? Go anonymously to the stations in a sting operation. Don't waste my time. So he looks at my front plate, types it into his computer and says I refused to test. Fuck you, pal.

Wonder if I will need to be smogged every year from now on...

At the Ocean

I was at the Terreanea resort again today. Because of a call time change I had over an hour to kill. So I went to the cliff overlookingth ocean and watched. I'm not a beach guy or much of an ocean guy though I love the water. Pools, rivers, and small lakes are cool. Overall, it's too cold for me here. But I watched the wildlife and saw things I never seen before.

There were brown pelicans skimming over the surface of the calm ocean less than a foot off the water. They were in a row or a V if there were a bunch of them. I wondered how they chose which one was leading. Then I would see the lead one plunge into the water for a fish. The second bird was now the lead. They all drafted off one another as they glided barely flapping their wings. It was cool to watch. I marvel that their tiny brains innately know the physics of flight, how to keep aloft; which dip of a tail feather turns you which way, and how not crash into things...

I also noticed something in the water, way out in the ocean. Is it a beam? A log? A sheet of plywood? It was a rigid black spot bobbing out there that didnt' get smaller. I watched it get closer, but couldn't tell much from the profile, not even size. Then a couple boats passed by. They were 30-40' long, and closer to me than the thing. So whatever it was must have been pretty damn big. I would have liked to see it wash up onto the beach, but I had to go to work. 2 hours later, after work, i went looking for it. The black shape was gone. Part of a pirate ship? A cargo container that fell off a ship? hm... The mysteries of the sea...

Sea Cave Spelunking

I went caving in a sea cave in Rancho Palos Verdes yesterday. I was working at the Terrenea Resort which is right on the ocean. When I was working there a couple weeks ago I went along this path along the ocean. Partly to see where it went and partly because I wanted to wander and look at the Ocean. It took me to a tiny public beach. But kinda private, because you would never know it was there if you hadn't heard of it or stumbled upon it, and since it's on a resort property...

The first time I was there I climbed over these rocks and found this cave carved out of the rock by the ocean. Being me, of course I went in. But as I get further back the light from outside faded about 40 feet in. Since I couldn't see what was in front of me, I turned around and decided to come back next time I was working there, but with a flashlight and camera.

The cave is damp from the high tides I imagine. It's about 70 feet deep and it has drops of about 10 feet carved by the swirling water. The surprising thing is that the top of it is about 40 feet up . The ocean carved upward when it reached the end of the tunnel. In the tunnel are some long planks. It looks like the remnants of a dock that floated in and got trapped. I'm not the first person to be in there, I found beer cans and grafitti.

When I was climbing around in there yesterday some people were coming toward the entrance of the cave. They could see me deep inside moving around with my light. "There's people in there!" the guy said. They didn't come in. I found that kind of funny. They must watch a lot of horror movies. What might I be? Pirates? Some subterreanean half human cannibal? It's a cave on a public beach with attendants. Shout a "hello" and come on in.

Facebook 2

I'm fnding Facebook a bit like 5th grade. The "friending" thing is a bit nerve wracking. It's like passing a note with 2 boxes, "Will you be my friend, yes or no. Check the appropriate box."

I'm surprised how quickly I want the people I friended to reply. I have a notorious lack of patience sometimes, and this brings it out. I also get disappointed when someone doesn't friend me, ignores the request. How stupid is that? It's like a test of who really is a friend, and I don't like finding out who doesn't want to be one... How will I greet them when I encounter them in the real world?

Stupid of me to be bothered by this, but I'm human...

Facebook

Okay! Fine! After much haranging and mild verbal beatings I finally joined Facebook.
It was easy and I am surprised that I wasted hours and hours on it today. I also waited with anticipation after sending friend requests. Would they be my friend? or would I be ignored? I'm still trying to figure out how people I don't know thought I would okay a friend request. Could they make a new category? Acquaintence's request? For people you know but may not consider a friend.

Because, really, some people have hundreds of friends. But how well do they really know these people? Do you invite them to 4th of July fireworks? Labor day barbques? Kareoke at the neighborhood bar? Probably not. I don't have hundreds of friends, but those I consider friends I might help moving, or drive them to the airport. Maybe not at some real awful hour. Though with the 405, that is virtually all the time.

My friend Shele says I need to figure out how this will fit into my life. I'm kind of thankful I don't know how to do it on my phone... Seen some crazy Facebook checkers lately...

Tahoe 2

On my second day off I took Jeff's inflatible kayak out on Lake Tahoe. Of course if you have a mountain bike in your car, you just might have a burly kayak.

He told me what to do, and I got in. The lake was smooth as glass and very clear. I started paddling and I could see it was shallow. My shadow slid along the bottom of the lake next to me. I got into deeper water and the shadow was still there. I cruised south of the Hyatt. On the shore are really big houses owned by really rich people. Billionaire types with docks and boat houses at the end which house jet skis and fast super boats.

I went about a quarter mile within 200 yards of the shore then turned into the lake. I wanted to see at what point the shadow underneath me disappeared. The lake has some drastic drop off points. Somewhere around 300-400 yards out my shadow was gone. Didn't see it happen.

I looked around and floated on the lake. It was very quiet and peaceful and kind of primal. There were only 2 boats that whizzed by. When they passed by me I would turn perpendicular to the waves that would soon to be rocking my world. It was a fun little blip to break up the glass-like ride.

On the way back I saw a katamaran parked out in the lake. It's used for 2 hour tours on the lake. There was no one one the boat, so I paddled underneath the center of it, between the 2 hulls of the boat. It was kind of cool.

Didn't dump in the lake. Didn't get cold or wet. Didn't die.

Another fun day.

Tahoe

I'm in Lake Tahoe this week for a job. It's really lovely up here. The lake is fantastically blue and very cold. 64 degrees on average. That is, probably, the first 5 inches. It's going to be colder as you go deeper.

I had a day off onTuesday. So one of my co-workers convinced us to go mountain biking. We rented bikes from the hotel. Jeff brought his own. Tells you how seriously he takes this sport. The guy at the sport shop suggested the Flume Trail. This was how water got from a man-made lake above Lake Tahoe to Virginia City. We were told it was a bit of up hill then, all down hill. It sounded fun. I haven't mountain biked since my friend Terry tried to kill me in Colorado Springs. So, basically, I am a pussy.

A bit of uphill was actually 5 miles uphill. And I will admit, I walked the majority of that. At 7000+ feet, I was breathing hard, my heart was pounding and I wanted to go back. I told Jeff that the Donner Party would still be alive if someone had spoken up and said, "fuck it, I'm going back." But they didn't and there's a bunch of stuff named for people who died.

After the 5 mile hike up it flattened out and the thin trail went along Lake Tahoe at about 1-2000 feet above the lake on a slippery track. It was fun and beautiful. When we posed for pictures we all used Jeff's bike. It doesn't have a kickstand. (Ask a mountain biker if mountain bikes have kickstands.) Jeff had to leave us behind. He had a conference call back at the hotel at 3 pm and we were slowing him down. I stayed with Mike. That is to say, I would wait for him to catch up to me. When we got to the end of the cliff trail, it was a steep downhill that was 3.3 miles long. Since I love speed, and being reckless, I booked down the trail with little regard for my own personal safety. The danger of faling off a cliff was nil. I would stop and wait for Mike. It took him longer for him to catch up to me. I was going 20+ mph, I think.

It was fun. Didn't die. ;)

Extra Annoying

I was working on a commercial yesterday as an extra. It's a fun job. You meet all sorts of people. And some who end up annoying the shit out of you.

There was one guy on this job. He said he'd worked with me before. Could be. I meet a lot of people who I might not see for a year, or maybe never again. After the job and a comment or two from Howard, I remembered vaguely

When this guy talks, which is a lot, you don't get much chance to have a conversation. It's more of an urgent monologue. If your attention starts to wane, he has the tendency to touch your shoulder or whatever is close. Could be a knee if you are sitting near him.

1. Don't touch me. If I am losing interest, notice that the audience is getting restless and get to the point if there is one. But touching me to reconnect me to the story I have no interest in is just going to piss me off. Do you poke a bear with a stick if it starts to walk away?
2. When you say "to make a long story short" wrap the story up in 2 sentences. Do not use that as a launching point to continue the story of how you bought your car for really cheap, and don't know for certain if it is stolen.
3. Telling me what Kanye West did to Talor Swift at the VMAs this week is similar to what happened to Jaycee Lee Dugard is going to get a vehement response from me. The 2 things have nothing in common except they both happened on planet Earth.

Howard told me later that I apparently got into it with this guy on a job back in January. I can see why, but I don't remember it.

35% of all Republicans in New Jersey...

Think President Obama is the antichrist.

18% said yes he is, 17% weren't sure, but didn't discount it. This was reported on Rachel Maddow's show tonight. I am shocked, but I can believe it. Considering evangelicals have overwhelmed the Republican party, and the base is a small rabid group, it's not that surprising.

Republicans used to be fiscally conservative, wanting smaller government. How did they get crazy?

When Egos Attack

First off, this has nothing to do with race. I don't care what color a persons skin is, don't be an ass.

Kanye West: If you look at the pictures of his red carpet walk to the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, you will see in his hand a bottle of Hennessey. If you look at other pictures later, there's less booze in the bottle. So, he was being all edgy and rappery and gettin' his drink on. Asshole.

He jumped on stage and took the mic away from an giddy 19 year old who won, Taylor Swift. Beyonce had the best video ever? Really, drunk boy? I disagree. It glorifies the objectification of women. "If you like it then you should have put a ring on it?" Women can be owned? Hmmm... didn't get that memo. And with the frentic dancing in the video was just shy of stripping. I like strippers. I've had friends who stripped. It's not a big deal. But the video wasn't that good.

Taylor Swift is 19 years old. And she won. She was shellshocked by your boorish behavior. The people in the control room had no idea what to do with your outburst, they shut off Taylor's mic and went to the next video cue, stomping on her chance to recover. Beyonce was a class act and had her come back to do the speech she didn't get the chance to do.

And Kanye? 3 half hearted apologies, but none were a simple, "I'm sorry. I fucked up." He gave excuses and said he needs a break.

Let's give him one. The entire world should take a break from Kanye. Don't pay any attention to him. Don't write about him, listen to his music, please ignore the "celebrity" that is Kanye. He called himself a celebrity. I don't think Elvis called himself a celebrity. Elvis was a singer. Kanye loves that people are talking about him. Even President Obama weighed in and called him a "jackass". That is right up there with Kim Jung Il having a picture taken with Clinton. It puts Kanye on the world stage.

Kanye is a long time, repeating interrupter. In Europe a few years ago he jumped on a mic and said, "If I don't win, the awards show loses credibility." That's a nice ego you got there. What do you do? Rap? You aren't curing cancer or finding ways to get to Mars? You just take other peoples music, tweak it, and talk about how cool you are, how much money you have, how many women you sleep with... Hmm...

Give me back the pissed off days of rap. NWA. Guys with street cred. This guy is the Kanye show. Much Ado About Nothing.

Strange Audition

I went to an audition at a little store front theatre in Hollywood for a Shakespeare type thing. In the email it said you "would be auditioning with more than one person in the room." Well, not just one person, everyone who was auditioning was sitting there watching the monologues. Of all the things to do, having to sit thru a bunch of Shakespeare monologues performed by actors of varying levels was difficult.

A cattle call for non union theatre? Really? Auditions aren't tough enough but to wait and watch other people make mistakes, or worse do your monologue before you, is an invitation for disaster. The whole thing made me not want to be there. I lost respect for the director running the thing. In my mind, it showed poor decisions on his part.

And though I find watching auditions fascinating, I don't like watching them before I have to work. The audition went okay. I dusted of Leontes, which no one does, and left hoping not to be called back.

I think I will be out of town during one of those weekends... Darn.

9/11

Eight years ago today we were attacked in an unprecidented and very successful way. No other attack on anything in the US had this kind of body count, or damage.

I learned about it shortly before 7 am. Someone called me and said, "turn on your TV." Bleary-eyed I did so and saw one of the twin towers burning. Then I saw the second tower get hit. It was shocking and unimaginable on so many levels. I got ready for work and put a tape in the VCR to record the news. I listened to it on the radio, but I wanted to see it later. I still have the tape, and I never looked at it...

While working that day it was strange seeing the sky devoid of planes. And a woman I didn't know in an elevator of a building I was in started talking to me, "Isn't it awful? How do you fight this?" I didn't know what to say. I agreed it was awful. And as far as fighting it, well, I figured we'd do something.

Work that day sent me out to buy an American flag for the window. I don't know, but I think it still might be there at Gartner. I wanted to do something like give blood. Not that it would do anything for the wounded in NYC, but I felt pretty helpless. Also, a friend had moved to NYC 9 months before so people were trying to find out if Jen Boutell was okay. She was, but it wasn't until the afternoon that this was learned.

The events of 9/11 made me thougthful and weirded me out for a long time. Played out as a fatalistic mood swing. 9/11 broke the invincible shell America had. We recovered, lost some liberties, are in two wars, and are no longer an invincible superpower.

Time Travel

On the Today Show, uh, today, there was a story about Time Travel and the people trying to make this a reality. There was one scientist in particular, Professor Rob Mallet, who was working on it for a reason that is almost a time travel cliche. When he was 10 years old his dad died of a heart attack. It destroyed his world at a very young age, and he wants to go back in time to see his dad. This is something in almost every time travel story. Going back to see a loved one.

He said he wants to send back information on disasters so that people won't die. The video showed the tsunami in Indonesia that killed 250,000. I have some problems with this idea.

Firstly, you would have to be able to convince the people living in the past that this really is a message from the future. And that we know what is going to happen and all these people should be saved... Normally when you say you are from the future you get locked up. If it was a message sent back without a person, why would anyone believe it?

Secondly, where do you stop? At what point does someone say "these people are worth saving, but these people are not?" Are you going to try to save the 6 million Jews killed by Hitler? The 3000 killed in 9/11? How about the people who were killed by Vesuvius in Pompei and Herculaneum? People die. That is the only thing undeniable in the world. To try to go back in time and save these people just messes with the time line.

Thirdly, if someone in the future had figured out how to travel back in time to stop all the tragedies in history, wouldn't all these terrible things been avoided? Hitler still killed the Jews. 9/11 still happened. The tsunami killed 250,000 people. Let the dead stay dead. Though... if someone had changed time, we wouldn't know it... because all events afterward would have changed too... Hmm... Paradoxes are a bitch. The people in Star Trek have it right. Don't fuck with Time.

It's a terrible thing to lose your father when you are 10. But it's not a good reason to go monkeying around with Time. Unless you are the Doctor. He does it with such panache!

A Game

There is a game I play in my head when I work certain places. Now I work in production, rigging specifically. This puts me on I-beams 100 feet in the air, or on loading rails in theaters also 100 feet in the air.

The game I play, hypothetically, is "How Would I Get Down?" The premise goes something like this... I can't use the stairs, ladders, or elevator to get down from this grid 107 feet in the air. If you look at the above picture, you will see there are a lot of options. And the answer goes something like...

"Leap from the rail to the ropes that are 6 feet out. Catch the rope, swing over to the I-beam that is 4 feet out and 10 feet below. Walk on the I-beam to a point where I can leap out, catch the thick electrical cable; slide down that to another rail. Walk along the rail to the wall. Climb down the large electrical conduit to the floor."

This is a hypothetical mental excercise. I would never do such a thing. Without an harness with the hang point in the back, a rope, and someone on belay. If I know the guys I'm working with on the fly rail, or the beams, I might pose this question. It is interesting to see how their minds work. If I don't know the guys I don't ask the question. I don't want them to think I'm nuts.

I'd ask you the next time you are somewhere unsual and high, look around and ask yourself that question, "How Would I Get Down?" But really, how many people go the strange places I do?

The President and School Children

President Obama is Going to talk to school kids all over the United States this week. Isn't that nice?

What? Glenn Beck says that they are being indoctrinated to Obama's Socialist Agenda!?!

Can someone tell Glenn Beck to shut the Hell up? Please? This speech is to tell kids to stay in school, study hard, get good grades, and anything is possible. Even becoming the President of a bunch of paranoid fear mongers who have nothing better to do than make outrageous claims about talking to some school kids.

Presidents have been talking to school kids for years. Regean, Bush 1, Carter. To say Obama is brainwashing children and keeping your kids out of school so they don't see the broadcast is just plain stupid.

Someone like Walter Cronkite, RIP, should go on TV and say, "don't be stupid." Because the furor about all this is just ridiculous.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program, America's Got Talent, already in progress...

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag

Who the fuck are these people? Seriously, what have they done to merit this kind of attention from the press? I only have a vague idea who they are, but they don't seem to be very talented in anything other than self promotion. But in LA that can be everything...

Firstly, Heidi Montag appeared in Playboy recently. She was getting paid a lot of money to appear nude. Um, there is nudity in her pictorial, sort of, but she didn't show a nipple or anything lower. The pictorial could be in Maxim. And she was interviewed by Pratt. (which is a hugely appropriate name, if you think of the English meaning.) She says she has 20-30 orgasms a day. Well, hmmm. If you are awake for 16 hours, getting a recommended 8 hours of restful sleep a night, that boils down to 1.25 to 1.875 orgasms an hour for the time you are awake. Unless she's bundling them into groups of 10. Really? don't you have a job? Self promotion takes up a lot of time. And speaking as a male, Pratt would be in a lot of pain after the 4th or 5th hard on. The erectile tissue just isn't meant for that kind of abuse. So she's a liar,or has apparatus that supercedes the need for a man.

Pratt. I know even less about him. But it's reported today that he wants to change his name to King Spencer Pratt. King Pratt. Still hugely appropriate. England has a queen, a few princes, America has nothing like that. Larry King! Hello? So he is volunteering to be King. We kicked all the kings out of this country. Maybe we can start that tradition again.

There needs to be a mandatory blackout from the press on all these self agrandizing losers. If we don't pay them any attention whatsoever, they will go away.

Probably too late though...

LA Fires

The Los Angeles fires have been going on for days now. I live maybe 15-30 miles from the large Station Fire, and ash is floating its way over to my neighborhood. The sunlight on the ground is tinged orange. There is a plume of smoke from the fires and the smoke has created what are called Pyro-Cumulus clouds. Its' pretty amazing.

Because the air quaility is so bad I picked up breath masks from a hardware store. My lungs felt tight as I did everyday things out in the polluted smoky air.

But there are somethings that are kind of funny and awe inspiring:

I saw a guy on the street selling a bubble gun at an intersection in Burbank. My car was stopped at a light and hundreds of small soapy bubbles were floating on the breeze with small bits of ash. A strange mix.

At night you can see the plume of smoke lit up by the fires below. The plume is colored orange and pulses as the fire beneath ebbs and flows.

The almost full moon is sort of orange red and the sunsets are a spectacular bright red from all the particulates in the air.

But you really shouldn't be breathing in all this.

Jaycee Lee Dugard

I have been watching and listening with horror to the coverage of the 11 year old girl who was kidnapped and held captive for 18 years. Became a mother as a teenager by this kidnapping child rapist. Then you have the recrimination and second guessing that comes when something like this is uncovered. How was it not found earlier...

She is going to have a long road back to whatever "normalcy" she might be able to find. It's not going to be easy. But what about the child rapist? He has already pleaded "not guilty." So has his wife. Now in situtations like this that are so apparent that this fucker is guilty, he should have instant capital punishment. It's not as if the girl were camping in his back yard for 18 years and he didn't know. He fathered her 2 daughters. Guilty. (sound of gunshot to the head.)

I hope and pray this girl, she might be 29, but she is still a little girl in so many ways, gets help. And I hope this guy, who was a registered sex offender, goes away for the rest of his life. Which can be shortened by putting him in with the rest of the general prison population. It's kind of ironic, but in prison, convicts don't like child rapists; they don't last very long...

New Super Hero!

When I was working on some Corporate gig about 3 years ago, I became a superhero.

CAPTAIN APATHY!

This was some Corporate gig. I had to sign a NDA because I might overhear something top secret. Yeah, right. It was 9 days of work and a paycheck. And I totally didn't care. I got paid to sit around and do nothing for most of that time. When I did have to go do something I totally didn't care. Usually I have some kind of pride and work ethic, but I just couldn't get it up. So to speak.

And I came up with Captain Apathy! (tm. all rights reserved.) I would do theme music, "Bum, bum, BUM!" Stand with my legs apart, put my hands on my hips like a Superman pose, then deflate and say, "Fuckin', nevermind. I don't give a shit, do what you want." This became a running joke for days on the job. The whole crew was Captain Apathy, but until then they hadn't put a voice to the emotion.

Later I would work other production gigs and run into some of the guys from that job. They didn't remember my name, but they remembered the Captain. They were still doing the running joke. Kind cool to know I am the Captain of not caring... Hm...

At the moment I feel the Captain is close. Somewhere off to the side. Because there is so much uncertainty in my life right now, I am having a hard time caring. If I gave my full attention to the things I have little or no control over and let myself worry about it, I'd have ulcers or become an alcoholic to anesthesize myself.

Sometimes not caring and letting go is all you can do.

Thanks, Captain Apathy!

Water

I like the water. I learned to swim at the age of 2 in Scottsdale. My parents didn't have a pool then, but they would get a membership to a pool at a hotel nearby. First was the Safari Hotel on Scottsdale and Camelback. Later it was the Valley Ho (That was the name. Stop snickering.) on Indian School and 68th street.

When I was maybe 7 or 8 we got a pool. On my street most evryone had a pool. I think there was only 2-4 houses without pools. It's kinda crazy. All the kids in the neighborhood would swim at each others houses. It was fun.

When I went to college I missed the pool. I haven't lived with a pool in the backyard since I was 17. But a good friend of mine lets me come over and swim at her place n Burbank. It's someone I housesit for every once in a while.

I'm not sure what it is about the water. The thick silence when underwater? When all I can hear is the grinding of my shoulders in their sockets. (It's not the years it's the mileage. My shoulders have seen a lot of mileage.) I like the floating weightless too. Also, I can stick to a wall like Spider-man and fly like Superman. That pleases the 8 year old part of my psyche. I have always wanted to be a superhero. Though the villans have the best lines...

My best day ever was in 2008 on the Great Barrier Reef scuba diving for the first time. I was underwater thinking, "This is going to be and expensive fucking hobby." I will someday get certified, and then go back into the deep. The warm deep. None of this California stuff. Brr....

Life Sentence

The Lockerbie bomber was released from a life sentence in a Scottish prison because he has terminal Prostate Cancer. It was called a compassionate release. I have questions.

1. Does his release change anything in his diagnosis of the prostate cancer? Still terminal I imagine. Release from prison is not a miracle cure.
2. He is meant to die in prison. Hence, "Life Sentence." Dying in prison of old age is okay, but dying in prison of cancer is bad? A life sentence is so they die in prison. Something will kill you whether it's old age, heart attack, or prostate cancer. 2 of them are okay, but prostate cancer, ooooo that's just mean?
3. He killed 270 people. Okay. That's not a question, but I thought I'd point out what his heinous crime was.

He is going to die in a lot of pain probably. But they have beds and drugs in prison. They can make him comfortable there. And he can fulfill his sentence. Life sentence.

Damn. I sound like a Republican.

Funny Fat Guys

I was working as an extra on a Bud Light commercial this week. When booked for this it was made clear that we would be in tighty whity underwear at some point. Or maybe boxers. No big deal. Been there, worn butt floss (G-string). Got to keep it after the shoot.

Anyway. Out of the 8 extras, 5 were men, 3 women. Out of the men, 4 were in pretty good shape. We were asked if we would wear flesh colored underwear. Bal-Togs they are called. We all agreed. It's a gig, they are paying me. I actually wore something smaller in a shower scene in a commercial.

When we saw the male leads, none of them were in good shape. One guy had lost 50 pounds and had rolls of loose stomach flesh drooping. And on top of that he was hairy. Just don't dance in front of us, Dude! It was pretty gross to look at these guys, but it was funny. It made me wonder what the casting notice said; "30 to 55, real guys. No model types." The spot should be very funny, and things will be pixelated, but where does this air? ESPN? Do I need to watch football to see this?

But it was the Funny Fat Guys who are cast in this spot. There is always room for Funny Fat Guys in Hollywood. So what did I learn that I can take and apply to my career? Hmmmmm...

Eat more doughnuts.

Snitching

I was reading the paper today about on-line privacy. I do google my name occassionally. I also go to my IMDb page but that it just to raise up the "star meter". It's silly but I don't like being in negative numbers...

Anyway, I learned about a website, www.snitch.name . This website is like a white pages for a bunch of other websites, but things like Facebook and Myspace and Pipl. There were websites I had never heard of. You can look for inmates in prison . Awesome. So I put my name in and hit "enter." It found the sites I know of. But I also found my name on websites I never heard of. It was a little scary. Information on the web is perpetually out there, and once it's out there it's like trying to capture smoke. You can't get it back in.

So what did I do? I put in other names of people I know. To see what comes up. Even one friend who is a techno peasant is out there on the internet in places I bet he doesn't know about. There are old addresses and pictures and all sorts of an electronic trail now that was not around or accessible with this ease 15-20 years ago.

And people still bug me to join Facebook.

SYTYCD

If you know the acronym, then you know what this will be about.

I hate to admit it, but I watch a reality show. Not America's Best Karaoke. I hate Ryan Seacrest, and the singers are not that good.

I watch, "So You Think You Can Dance." I had never heard of it until 2 years ago. My disdain for reality shows in general had kept me from noticing it before then. I was visiting Bill and Heather in San Diego, and they were obsessed with this show. I thought it was interesting, but didn't really watch until last summer.

I love the different dance styles. The dancers are generally amazing, and the girls are atheltic and hot. And I watch wishing I could dance like them with that kind of virtuosity. I have always liked some of the old Hollywood musicals. Particularly Gene Kelly, and Fred Astaire movies. Singing in the Rain is a classic, and Daddy Long Legs is just fun. Gene Kelly was a man dancing. Powerful and athletic, and fearless in his Broadway style. Astaire had grace, style and elegance.

I like to dance, but it's kind of a freestyle thing in bars. And something too rarely done. When I try to dance something choreographed, I think I dance like a fighter. After years of training, my muscles are geared more toward sword fighting and hurting people. I can pick up any style of martial arts very quickly, but dancing I find tough.

I would like to be able to do half of what the dancers on SYTYCD do. I admire their dedication, sacrifice and passion for what they do. I have done the same for acting. Those dance classes at ACT are just a vague memory now...

Comic Con - Day 4

Sunday.

After such a late night I slept in as best I could. Say 9 am? And then packed a bit in anticipation of leaving. I went to the Convention center and caught up with Zack. He had loaned me a shirt for Saturday night. I didn't have anything dressy. So he kindly gave me something so I didn't look like a slob.

I caught up with him in the hall and we exchanged shirts. I was just worn down by the whole weekend and didn't really want to fight the crowds in the dealer's room. I said "Bye" to Zack and JoJo and then started to leave. On the way out I looked at the schedule. I rarely go to panels, and certainly not those you have to wait with 3000 other people to get in a room. But there was a Voice Over panel that had already started. Cartoon voices. My friend Kari makes a living doing anime and cartoons and I have been trying to break in to the field. (classes, a demo, etc...) So since it was already going I just walked right in and sat in the back.

There were some great VO actors there. Legends really. They were given a script with no preparation, the moderator gave them their multiple roles, and "Action." They did a cold read of a Superman script; one guy was both Ma and PA Kent. If the moderator said "change" they had to read the same line again in a different voice. It was really amazing. And a bit daunting. It made me wonder if I could do that. My friend Kari is really amazing. Sometimes I will recognize her voice, but many times I don't. I'm getting better at picking out her voice, though.

After that there was a panel about the business of VO. So I went to that. It ended at 2 pm. That was my absolute latest I could stay at the Con. I had to be in Culver City to feed a dog, and then go design lights for a show at the Knightsbridge. The panel was good. Did I learn anything that can help? I don't know. Other than keep trying, but I knew that one. It's just like anything else in this business. Persistence in the face of overwhelming odds.

I did give a Demo reel to a couple video game makers, and I gave my card to a few directors. So hopefully something will come from the seeds I sowed there.

I went and got my car from where I left it on the streets for 3 days and drove to the hotel. Finished packing and got out of San Diego.

All in All, a great con. And a nice view from the other side of the velvet rope.