cobra jet creepin'

I just got back from Omaha, Nebraska. Terence and I were hired to portray park rangers who stumbled upon some strange tracks. Either too scared or simply unwilling to understand the full impact of these tracks, my character, whom I named William Dewberry, asked a lot of questions:
“What’s it mean?”
and
“What it is going on?”
and, finally,
“What’re we going to do?”
Terence played the older fella. He’d seen this kind of thing before. The way Moulder always had some insider info on a recent cow disembowelment, Terence (he named his character Terence) knew that IT had come back, and IT was bigger than ever.
The alien tracks were made by a Toyota Tundra. The fine people at the Nebraska Lottery were giving them away again like they did before, for the very first time. The tracks were really made by rolling a spare tire off a Chevy S-10 owned by the boom operator. I named his boom mike Veal Diamond.
We shot on a beautiful state park outside of Omaha. Lunch was cooked on a grill at a lodge on the lake. One girl, Donna, was wardrobe, make-up, set design (props), and my personal assistant. She constructed our uniforms. She sewed badges on the brownshirts that looked like park ranger stuff. One said "Trailhiker" and another had a tornado on it. The pins we wore were silver earrings.
So, now I’m in lottery spots for Georgia, Kentucky, and Nebraska. 36 states have a lottery, 21 share some kind of mega-pot. Here are the winning numbers from last Friday’s MegaMillions jackpot worth $205 million:
23 - 25 - 43 - 46 - 49 - Mega: 26
I don’t think anyone has won in over a dozen weeks. What is going on?

reality tv

the other day, i was interviewed for a documentary. the subject is a friend of mine, joel, who composes music for films and theater improvisations. he's also a high school teacher.
the entire crew is a 2-man producer/director team. they are mike and randy. they came over and set up in my living room one beautiful afternoon with a nice digital camera (was it 24-fps?) and some lights.
i gave opinions like:
'joel's an integral part of the story-telling process...'
and
'i think all award shows are bullshit...'
i'm intrigued by the idea of friends doing documentaries on one another. approaching your buds with objectivity, yet having to remain sensitive to the picture you paint. you can easily manipulate the footage to present a one-sided story.
'joel is a very deep thinker...'
that's what a documentary does. can't afford to have many plot lines. it would be hours long. but maybe documentaries should do that. try and tell the whole story.
'this is the wrong industry if you're in this to make friends...'
attempt to cut hundreds of hours of action into one succinct struggle to accomplish something.
'uh, i think i was out of town when that happened. what was the question...'
mike and randy have a rich environment to pull from. peter brook once wrote "Anyone interested in processes in the natural world would be very rewarded by a study of theater conditions. His discoveries would be far more applicable to general society than the study of ants or bees." there will be loud arguments, confessional whispers, and all the while costumes and music. built-in production design. there's drama in the story and the making of it.
'the most important thing to remember about joel is he carries a gun.'

edjucated burrito

yesterday i shot a promo for the learning channel. they are doing a special on magic, i think. it was all improvised (they're tag is life unscripted), so i never saw a script. me and this guy jody sat on a couch and did magic for each other. i showed him the rubber pencil trick.
"oh look, what's this? a normal #2 pencil? or a paranormal #2 pencil? look it's rubber. it's a rubber pencil. check it out. made of rubber."
suddenly, jody knocked it from my hand.
"yo, why you gotta illusion hate?"
later, jody did the magic thumb. repeatedly, he disconnected then reconnected his thumb from his hand. just when i thought it was gone for good, he pulled the thumb from my nose. i was astounded.
much later, these two characters were still at it. only now, we had a girl named tristan. and a big box. we tried to get her into the box. i promised her i could make her disappear. she wouldn't do it. as an incentive, jody clumsily pulled a bouquet of flowers from his armpit. tristan still wouldn't bite. in fact, she left the room. voir la! "i told you i could make her disappear."
this was late in the day. they wanted to wrap by 7:30, which by this time it was. and they needed reaction shots from tristan. there was 30 feet of film left. that's about 15 seconds worth. somehow we got 30 seconds of reactions from 15 seconds of film...magic.
spoiler: the box was a real disappearing act box, too. i'll tell you what i learned on this learning channel shoot. there's a false bottom to the box. only it isn't on the bottom. there really isn't a bottom. it's a fixed flap on the side. so when decepto turns it over for you to see, the girl is behind that same flap.

fast actin' tinactin

no commercial auditions for a while. one of the last i did was for a country music collection. you've seen the hour-long spots late at night. the address is always atlanta. i was paired with my "wife" played by mary kraft, and i had not been told prior to this what the content of the spot was. we then had to improvise dialogue as a married couple who were happy that this collection was now available:
"if the voice of an angel comes through the speakers, i will turn it up and listen to it all night."
"we honeymooned in nashville."
"it's great to hear classics. and so easy now that they're all on one disc!"
"favorite? well, we saw kenny rogers on our honeymoon, fresh off his 'roasters' tour, so i guess he's our de facto favorite."
"i boot-scoot, she toe-taps."
we didn't get a callback. the casting agent snickered so loudly that mary and i had to ask her point blank what was so funny. we were a real couple and these were honest-to-goodness replies. aw heck.
i have gone on two film auditions in the last week. a read for a role in the hardly-anticipated sequel big momma's house 2.
the second read was for what could possibly be a good film. the script seems tight and funny, written by tv writers. and it's being produced by scott rudin who did rushmore, i heart huckabees, royal tenenbaums, life aqauatic with steve zissou, closer, team america: world police, the school of rock... you get the picture. actually, i hope i get the picture.
it's called failure to launch, and it's about a 30-something guy whose parents set him up with his dream girl to get him out of the house. really, i'm telling you the scenes are funny. it stars matthew mcconaughey and sarah jessica parker. ay, there's the rub. well. if i even get a one-liner i'll be happy. not satisfied. just happy. happy ain't all that.

float right

i'm going to try something. here it goes:

why should anyone get married? it's a shortcut to finding out if you're capable of compassion and listening. staying married is a different animal altogether. one may remain attached after realizing she can endure and ultimately enjoy his company for a lifetime. for similar reasons boys linger in college through middle-age.

this was my paltry attempt at writing. i used kurt vonnegut as a model. in school i worked alongside a grad student who tried to get all us writing novices to consider authority in literature. what it was, which writers had it, and how did they come by it. the whole semester i never got past what it was. and the thing about authority in writing is this: it's like the concept of time, only you needn't anyone else to agree. you simply tell the time. present things as they are without apology and, like magic, what follows has extraordinary say-so.
the passage above has authority, i'd say. it presents an idea, follows with a definitive (but not too definitive) answer. the next sentence presents an obvious, linear issue that springs from the answer. and finally ends with a bland abstraction, which i bet would be a whole lot cooler as a metaphor. let's see:

does the misanthrope suspect his shadow?

not a great one. but it is interesting to start and end with questions.

in much the same way, the earth, whose orbit is elliptical, is only moving away from its colleague the sun one ten-thousandth of a centimeter a year. they're going to be roomates for quite a while.

this one is way off topic and a real stretch. it has nothing to do with compassion and listening. worse, putting things in term of astrophysics feels like a cheap attempt at sounding like kurt vonnegut. it's just as well. i'll keep practicing:

since compassion means "with suffering" being married ever in one's life merits a nod from the buddhists...

man this is hard.