peckish
today i missed an audition for some sort of low-APR lender advert. i'm glad i did. instead i shot a scene for fake wood wallpaper's feature "blood car". click it, read about it.
i was a man-in-black, refusing to sacrifice my flesh to blood car. partly because i wasn't being paid enough by the government. but mostly because i found a marshmallow hamburger in the glove box. after three bites, i conclude the mallow burger tastes like a flip-flop.
mike brune chased us on a bicycle while swinging an axe.
fake wood wallpaper are idiosyncratic story-tellers. one of my favorites is a short called "beard arm". alex orr portrays a man with a beard. and an incredibly long arm, which he and co-star chris pierce use in an attempted robbery. they're foiled when --- oh, no way. i'm not spoiling it.
chance or chancre?
yet another lottery audition notched on the old sell-out belt. i actually auditioned twice for one commercial. last week for the voiceover and this week for the on-camera. the campaign basically says play the lotto because...well, you never know...
many state lotteries have come under fire for being less than truthful in their advertising. in most states that have a lottery, it is touted as a benign form of gambling that as at the very least investing money into that state's education system. what has actually happens is this: the state's education budget is cut and the lottery makes up for that loss. no extra $ goes into education. even worse, in a minority of states the money is "sent directly to the general fund for their legislators to appropriate as they see fit."
yet the advertising often leads the citizens to believe otherwise. even more dubious are the myriad of campaigns that entice players to play fantasy games in their heads over winning. in fact, the commercial i auditioned for the name of the game is fantasy 5. while the slogan "today could be the day" seems innocuous here are some other state's temptations:
"All you need is a dollar and a dream" (New York).
"Work is nothing but heart attack-inducing drudgery" (Massachusetts).
"How to get from Washington Boulevard to Easy Street" (Illinois).
"His [Martin Luther King's] vision lives on. Honor the dream—D.C. Lottery"
(from the mackinac center for public policy)
they know upon whom they prey. i see these people everytime i get gas. the streets are littered with their scratch-off dreams. reams of losing numbers ticker-tape the gutters. poor minorities already have bad odds. playing lotto only seems to compound the statistical quicksand. isn't it crazy how often the winner is a fifty-something white guy? why is that? the national gambling impact study commission shows "lottery play falls with formal education." it's because it takes a lotta LUCK.
how does one check their personal quantity of luck?
check out chances of winning the lottery for dummies. this is about as bad as it gets. look at the examples the writer gives. picking 3 out of 4 numbers. i could accidentally pick that batting my eyelashes in a coma.
now i should also point out that I LOVE GAMBLING. i play cards. though luck plays a part, it demands skill. and organization. the very things that most people with no formal education lack.
for my part, the audition is a gamble. the drive to the studio. writing my social security number on the sign-in sheet always makes me edgy. and if i do get the part, there's the risk that i may be automatically disqualified for other acting jobs based on exclusive contracts.
but that's the gigantic, dangerous, mine-strewn actory chance i take.
