fun with wards

terri schiavo. it's pronounced SHY-vo. thanks wikipedia. the state of florida tried making her a ward of the state, thus becoming her legal guardian and then the state could reinsert the feeding tube. the state failed.
now, many people have made the difficult decision to remove a loved one from life support. why george bush feels it necessary to get involved, the lord only knows.
two ironies i've read. maybe true maybe not. the first, some doctors believe terri has hope. after several years of stem cell research. but as we all know, george bush nixed that one. maybe he feels guilty?
the second irony i've read is that the reason the girl had the heart attack that put her in a coma 14 years ago was that she was bulemic. now they're fighting over whether to force feed her.
i get this way about music. i insert a metal tube into my ear and force feed the auditories. in 2 weeks, m ward has not left the cd player. his latest is called "transistor radio" and it's sublime. the m stands for matt. he's playing here at the earl on april 6. there is so much going on in the production. one track has a full drum kit rolling on high gear. ward put it so far in the background, it's like when a radio station tunes in to your lonesome speaker, coincidentally playing rhythm for your soul.
there was this guy, jeff ward, a builder in the turner scene shop that everybody called evil jeff. i think this was because he hung out with jeff davidson and they needed a distinction. funny tho, jeff ward called jeff davidson evil jeff, thus throwing the system into chaos. truly evil.
and, finally, close friend and drinking buddy chris ward (aka mc chris) will be here at the mjq's drunken unicorn wednesday. i miss spending hours and hours drinking beer and whiskey with him, but i must admit things have quieted down since he went on the road. he's a whizbang with the words. i find that the irish are born lyricists and balladeers.
i wonder if jeff tweedy is irish. where does that name tweedy come from? scottish? perhaps he is the real evil jeff.

jog left at greenland

a couple weeks back we were in toronto for the catch23 tournament of wonders, a first time festival of improvisational theater. it was attended by an amazing cast of characters from around north america. also, they had the baddest of the bad ass logos, which unfortunately you can barely make out on their website. it's a unicorn's head mounted like a trophy and spattered with blood. maybe it's still alive?
one approach that i've seen a few times recently that i'm dick van dyke-ing over a coffee table for is this: 2 person show with 1 person on guitar. now, the couples (theater*in*a*box, crumbs, catch23) are so fluid and funny, i wonder how can it get better. add a guy on git-box to underscore and segue every few beats with poetry and lyrical abstractions in and out of context, that's how.
rene and i went to a strip club downtown called the brass rail. yeah, it's famous, and yeah becky said ecch when she found out we went. but! i left rene for a few moments and when i came back a young, vibrant girl in stripper gear was hitting him up for lapdances. rene politely, almost ashamedly, said "no thanks." to this she replied, "that goes against the rules of improv, you're supposed to say 'yes, and take me in the back room and get me hot.'" only in toronto would you find a stripper who's completed the first four levels of second city classes.

heroes

a few weeks back i got the call every short actor (i'm five eight) gets. the offer to play a costumed character. around children.
this was a promotional shoot, so it runs only a few weeks, and they agreed this type of work is hard, so my agent negotiated $750 for a few hours work.
turns out, i'm playing a teenage mutant ninja turtle.
the costumes were incredibly well-made, numbered and licensed. and made for someone five four. the rules were i wasn't allowed to talk or remove the head.
so it was hot as hell, kids were punching me almost as much as they were hugging me and telling me (well, michelangelo) how much they loved me.
it got me to thinking about heroes, mythology. i'm pretty much selling out as an actor by doing commercial work. it doesn't feed the intellect, there's little to no craft about it. anybody and everybody will have done some kind of advertising at some point in their life.
how could a guy like me be on the path to be a hero?
i'm in the midst of an identity crisis, and have been for many years. both of my father figures committed suicide in the last ten years, thus taking away my objective to "kill" my father and atone with him. in recent days i've departed from a theater company i started that is now run by a devisive, cunning business person. the whole of my ego was attached to the endeavor and i'm only now starting to feel the effects of abandonment, loss of identity, etc.
well, this is it. a hero does not hear the call, but eventually faces these odds with blind ambition and overcomes them, many times unwittingly, as an unlikely hero.
hunter s. thompson, though brilliant, was called an unlikely hero, yet he traded that moniker when he took his own life a few weeks ago. many of his fans would have punched him as much as they hugged him too.
so, scrunching my skinny manframe into a short girl's TNMT outfit was humbling. cartoon network produced it, and afterwards they opened a giant box of toys and let me have as many action figures as i wanted. i gave one to my buddy (ironically he works for sealab2021), and another to my buddy's kid.
does that bring me closer to hero status?

winners. all of them.

the state of kentucky just agreed to start a lottery for its good citizens. my friend daniel pettrow and i were hired as actors in a commercial for this legalized gambling adventure.
we embodied two convenience store clerks doing a sports play by play of a man by the cash register trying to decide which numbers to pick.
we shot this in franklin, tennessee, about 20 minutes outside of nashville.
the evening before daniel and i spent in nashville bowling, playing galaga and the addam's family pinball. we missed all the honky tonk, and forgot to buy cowboy hats. we did get lost trying to find our hotel for quite some time. we talked a lot about my future as an actor in the atlanta scene. daniel is great for dialogue on this topic, but he also dudn't eff around when it comes to doing what you discuss. i get the feeling he and i will continue working together for a long time.
during the shoot, at the request of the agency, we improvised a bunch of dialogue as what the industry calls "wild sound." some of my favorite lines are:
"it's just a man with a coin and a dream."
"the indians call this becoming a warrior."
"i'm reminded of '69 the summer of love."
the agency then politely asked us not to go off script. too late! we already won the attention of a PA who is shooting his own feature, and asked us to be a part of it.
daniel and i agreed on the ride back to atlanta to do the movie for paid travel expenses and cowboy hats.

ad man

i spent two days on a cattle ranch in rural north georgia shooting a promo for the country music awards. jeff foxworthy is hosting and the artist was on set with us. he talked into a microphone that was never plugged in.
there were three parts to the spot(s). in the first, we shot watermelons from a catapult in the back of a pickup truck. it was made of heavy lumber from lowe's and the slingshot effect was acheived with a straight-6 engine block chained to it. we almost nailed calves running to their cows on several occasions. oh, and the faces of country music award nominees are on the watermelons.
the second part had me and 5 others harnessed to and spinning around on a wheel of death. there was a man in his 50's that threw up on it. he was at the very top. strangely, no vomit made contact with anyone underneath him. he said he drank 2 cups of coffee before we climbed into the harness.
the third part had four guys (count me in!) riding a mechanical bull at once. homo. erotica. not to mention the "stunt coordinator" thought it was funny to molest me and make "oh baby" comments in my ear. i said my ear.
i got ringworm from the farm.