(updated/edited Fri. night) Thanks to all who commented on the demo. the decision is made, it has replaced the old on the regular demo page. Also, I've finally got an actual resume up... as opposed to the copy of the promo page that was there before. So... yeah. There's that.
Just read Gene Wilder's autobiography. What a gentle, unpretentious, honest, admirable man. At his age, he is very forthcoming about all his foibles and the shortcomings that caused him to falter here and there, and the perspective he looks at it all with is so humbling.
I find I identify with him strongly after reading the book, but then again I think you're supposed to. Perhaps it's just an actor thing, maybe everybody would feel that way upon reading it... but I really hope I reach the point he is at, when you can accept everything with such grace and value things for the wisdom they have brought you.
It's the first book I've read in a long time that really lit my fire as an actor, and I recommend it for that reason among others. It's called "Kiss Me Like a Stranger."
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Variations
Quick note: Here's my new, revised demo... not up on the main demo page yet, because I need some feedback... so take a look... but not unless you're gonna give feedback. Otherwise you can wait in line and buy a ticket like everybody else... won't...
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Keep smilin', keep shinin'
Before I begin, I will state three words that have ruled my life since one of you sent me the link after becoming addicted to Boomshine. The three words are: Desktop Tower Defense.
Moving on...
Had a great talk with my good friend Matt Jones today. We realized how long it has been since we have actually seen one another. This line of work, that's the norm - you don't see people for a long time, some of your best friends are often reduced to being nothing but a voice on the phone, some blips of e-mail or an update on myspace/facebook/adultfriendfinder/whatever. It's sad in some ways, but amazing in others. You know your friendship can last if you can go YEARS without hanging out but still consider someone a close, trustworthy friend. It's not "normal" but it's normal for us.
Of course, some friendships are "single-servings," in that you'll do a show with people and it's great but not make any lasting connection. That's fine too.
Luckily, though, there are friends like John. Matt. Mallorie. Jamie, Nick. Stephen... and more (don't get miffed, those are just the ones I've communicated with in a significant way in the past week) who make life a lot easier. I've worked with them, but haven't seen any of them in a while and I don't know when I'll next see them in person. Still, they are good friends that I will value, and I met them thanks to this weird business.
Then there's Dustin, whose friendship I will have valued for THIRTY FREAKING YEARS come 2009. I'd say I've never worked with him, because he's in computers and IT, but I did convince him once to take the role of Zoltan Karpathy in our junior year of high school when someone quit and we needed him. That doesn't count, I know, but it counts toward the 99% of my friends whom I have done at least one show with.
In other news, Vanessa and I head for our Mexican getaway in ten days! I still find it funny that after all the amazing places we've both seen, all the obscure islands and quiet hideaways away from the "tourists..." The first trip we book outside of our assigned travels is Cancun. Seems so typical. Two words: all inclusive. Like the Voyager, but I doubt it will be held to quite the same elite standard. I can't wait. I can't wait I can't wait. I'm excited about every cheesy, decadent aspect of this trip, in addition to making my first open-water ocean scuba dives. We are going to have a blast.
Moving on...
Had a great talk with my good friend Matt Jones today. We realized how long it has been since we have actually seen one another. This line of work, that's the norm - you don't see people for a long time, some of your best friends are often reduced to being nothing but a voice on the phone, some blips of e-mail or an update on myspace/facebook/adultfriendfinder/whatever. It's sad in some ways, but amazing in others. You know your friendship can last if you can go YEARS without hanging out but still consider someone a close, trustworthy friend. It's not "normal" but it's normal for us.
Of course, some friendships are "single-servings," in that you'll do a show with people and it's great but not make any lasting connection. That's fine too.
Luckily, though, there are friends like John. Matt. Mallorie. Jamie, Nick. Stephen... and more (don't get miffed, those are just the ones I've communicated with in a significant way in the past week) who make life a lot easier. I've worked with them, but haven't seen any of them in a while and I don't know when I'll next see them in person. Still, they are good friends that I will value, and I met them thanks to this weird business.
Then there's Dustin, whose friendship I will have valued for THIRTY FREAKING YEARS come 2009. I'd say I've never worked with him, because he's in computers and IT, but I did convince him once to take the role of Zoltan Karpathy in our junior year of high school when someone quit and we needed him. That doesn't count, I know, but it counts toward the 99% of my friends whom I have done at least one show with.
In other news, Vanessa and I head for our Mexican getaway in ten days! I still find it funny that after all the amazing places we've both seen, all the obscure islands and quiet hideaways away from the "tourists..." The first trip we book outside of our assigned travels is Cancun. Seems so typical. Two words: all inclusive. Like the Voyager, but I doubt it will be held to quite the same elite standard. I can't wait. I can't wait I can't wait. I'm excited about every cheesy, decadent aspect of this trip, in addition to making my first open-water ocean scuba dives. We are going to have a blast.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Was Colonel Potter related to Harry Potter?
I had a fascinating read today during my lunch at Borders. I read part of DMZ Volume 1. It's a speculative fiction about a near-future in which the US has become overextended abroad militarily. The population (beginning in Montana, natch) becomes so war-weary and pressured that things boil over into a civil war which rages all the way across the US to New York, where a cease fire occurs leaving the US forces on Long Island and the "Free States" holding Jersey. After a perfunctory four-hour long evacuation before the initial attack(s), Manhattan itself becomes the "DMZ" and is mostly cut off from the rest of the world.
Anyway, it made for a good read over my cup of soup, asiago pretzel, and large no water ice-brew coffee.
Not even remotely why I started to post here. I was reminded tonight about a hugely addictive game called BOOMSHINE. It is the antithesis of the technological, narrative wonder I mentioned yesterday. It is a simple, addictive brain exercise of pattern recognition. Have fun. It's free, online, and FYI only something less than 5% of those who play are able finish level 12.
Anyway, it made for a good read over my cup of soup, asiago pretzel, and large no water ice-brew coffee.
Not even remotely why I started to post here. I was reminded tonight about a hugely addictive game called BOOMSHINE. It is the antithesis of the technological, narrative wonder I mentioned yesterday. It is a simple, addictive brain exercise of pattern recognition. Have fun. It's free, online, and FYI only something less than 5% of those who play are able finish level 12.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Children and Art
Some of my title posts only make sense to me.
Anyway...
Today I picked up BioShock, a new game for the xbox360 and PC. There has been a debate for some time, as technology has evolved and fully formed narratives have been possible in gaming, as to whether a game could ever be considered "art."
Roger Ebert wrote a very well-formed piece giving his opinion on that matter some time ago, and while I'm too lazy at the moment to google it and provide you with the link here, it's out there. (I'll probably come back to edit this and put the link here.)
It's not something I've had much of an opinion on, though I have basically held that there's no reason a game couldn't be art. Art is such a hard concept to define. Art versus craft...
Well, in starting up BioShock I have for the first time found myself feeling that a game has answered that question. Defined what a gaming, as art, can be. Narrative, visual, suspense...
I'm a casual gamer, though in the last few entries I have mentioned games. I'm looking forward to a game like Halo 3 because it's a great game to play with friends as much as I'm really intrigued to know where this story goes, how it ends.
When I was a kid games didn't have stories unless they were in the booklet the game came with. You had one button and an Atari Joystick, your imagination had to conjure up whatever objects were vaguely suggested by the pixels onscreen. Nintendo wasn't much better. Sega Genesis, well... so on and so on.
We're now to the point where developers and game designers are, must be, storytellers. Halo 3 will make more money in one day, from pre-orders alone, than the biggest entire WEEKEND Hollywood has ever had.
They're making a Halo movie, which while being hard-pressed to capture the scale and story of that epic series will likely have less of a hard time than anyone who tries to adapt BioShock.
Playing BioShock, I found myself not thinking "they should make this into a movie," but that this was far better than a movie, more fully realized than it could be as a simple film. I have to agree with my friend John, in a way. He wrote me recently and said that he wasn't all that excited about a film of the novel THE LOVELY BONES. He said those characters had been haunting him in the years since he read the novel and he'd prefer they go on haunting him in their own way.
Don't do a spit take with your coffee when you read what I'm about to write.
I think video games are reaching that point, along with books and film, where their experience can become a personal and involving one that would be diminished by being distilled to another art form.
Thoughts
Anyway...
Today I picked up BioShock, a new game for the xbox360 and PC. There has been a debate for some time, as technology has evolved and fully formed narratives have been possible in gaming, as to whether a game could ever be considered "art."
Roger Ebert wrote a very well-formed piece giving his opinion on that matter some time ago, and while I'm too lazy at the moment to google it and provide you with the link here, it's out there. (I'll probably come back to edit this and put the link here.)
It's not something I've had much of an opinion on, though I have basically held that there's no reason a game couldn't be art. Art is such a hard concept to define. Art versus craft...
Well, in starting up BioShock I have for the first time found myself feeling that a game has answered that question. Defined what a gaming, as art, can be. Narrative, visual, suspense...
I'm a casual gamer, though in the last few entries I have mentioned games. I'm looking forward to a game like Halo 3 because it's a great game to play with friends as much as I'm really intrigued to know where this story goes, how it ends.
When I was a kid games didn't have stories unless they were in the booklet the game came with. You had one button and an Atari Joystick, your imagination had to conjure up whatever objects were vaguely suggested by the pixels onscreen. Nintendo wasn't much better. Sega Genesis, well... so on and so on.
We're now to the point where developers and game designers are, must be, storytellers. Halo 3 will make more money in one day, from pre-orders alone, than the biggest entire WEEKEND Hollywood has ever had.
They're making a Halo movie, which while being hard-pressed to capture the scale and story of that epic series will likely have less of a hard time than anyone who tries to adapt BioShock.
Playing BioShock, I found myself not thinking "they should make this into a movie," but that this was far better than a movie, more fully realized than it could be as a simple film. I have to agree with my friend John, in a way. He wrote me recently and said that he wasn't all that excited about a film of the novel THE LOVELY BONES. He said those characters had been haunting him in the years since he read the novel and he'd prefer they go on haunting him in their own way.
Don't do a spit take with your coffee when you read what I'm about to write.
I think video games are reaching that point, along with books and film, where their experience can become a personal and involving one that would be diminished by being distilled to another art form.
Thoughts
Friday, August 17, 2007
You had me at HALO
I am officially registering my protest that it is so frickin' hot here right now.
It wasn't this hot in Texas, at all.
Humbug.
It wasn't this hot in Texas, at all.
Humbug.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
There's the life for a man like me
Just writing... I'm sitting here in The Vagabond Cafe listening to some local musician give an impassioned interview in a nearby booth to some local music writer. It's kind of inspiring.
The guy who owns this place has created something really great, here - comfortable and homey, movies on the wall out back every Monday night, coffeehouse/bar combo thing. Bohemian, but not in a patchouli way. You see people of many stripes here.
Free wifi, obviously. I count four laptops between the five occupied tables or booths. The only table without one is the one with the writer and the Japanese-looking musician with the five-day growth.
Three guys at the bar.
I got back to Kansas yesterday, having been a bit of a vagabond myself. I've taken a lot of time off this summer, and it's been great. I'm itching to go back to work now, though... and one way or the other, I can't take anything that starts before September 16. Vanessa's best friend is getting married the 15th, she's the maid of honor, etc...
So we decided that, as we are now actively working to figure out what that next gig will be, we would book a proper vacation between now and then. We found a nice, inexpensive, all-inclusive trip for right after Labor Day.
I have had a lot pf perspective lately, I guess this birthday made me think. I have been drawn into thinking of age and years and events and time and places and happenings and things.
I think of something that happened in, say, 1999... then I think about how long ago the was. Then, to put that amount of time into perspective, I think about where,what, or who I was that same number of years before that event. In that case, you know, it winds up 1991. The same difference between the 1991 me and the 1999 me relative to 2007 me. Wow.
Of course, you can argue the changes slow down after, say, 23... growing up does bring a lot of changes...
All in all, in my inventory of self... I am happy about what I have accomplished as a performer, still impassioned to do more. I am happy about the many friends I have shared time with, and recognize that an occasional note on myspace or facebook is not sufficient to honor those friendships, those which somehow don't fade into acquaintance despite huge lapses of time between contact. I am regretful of wrongs done, and I am regretful of loved ones lost. I only recently realized how deeply the loss of my grandmother, almost four years ago, affected me. I have been blessed with some amazing, life-altering experiences thanks to travel and performing in the past few years.
All this soul-searching and all these soft-smiling memories have flashed by me, lately, and it has led me to one unalterable truth:
I'm really jazzed that Halo 3 is coming out soon.
Man, I am such a geek.
Oh yeah, I have to recommend a book: THE LOVELY BONES, which I think I just heard Peter Jackson is making into a film soon. I just read it, it's hauntingly beautiful. I envy whoever gets to play the father in that film. Take my word that it isn't as Mitch-Albomy as it might sound in reading the jacket. Nothing against Mitch Albom, but this isn't that.
Dusty - my best and oldest friend in the world, more like a brother than a friend - saw that book as I plopped it down on his table last night and was about to make fun of me for it before he read the jacket. Then he relented and played MADDEN 08, shouting at players onscreen in the office as I played 360 in his living room.
Going now. Damn, it's hot outside. I will probably edit this down later, hateful of my own verbosity.
The guy who owns this place has created something really great, here - comfortable and homey, movies on the wall out back every Monday night, coffeehouse/bar combo thing. Bohemian, but not in a patchouli way. You see people of many stripes here.
Free wifi, obviously. I count four laptops between the five occupied tables or booths. The only table without one is the one with the writer and the Japanese-looking musician with the five-day growth.
Three guys at the bar.
I got back to Kansas yesterday, having been a bit of a vagabond myself. I've taken a lot of time off this summer, and it's been great. I'm itching to go back to work now, though... and one way or the other, I can't take anything that starts before September 16. Vanessa's best friend is getting married the 15th, she's the maid of honor, etc...
So we decided that, as we are now actively working to figure out what that next gig will be, we would book a proper vacation between now and then. We found a nice, inexpensive, all-inclusive trip for right after Labor Day.
I have had a lot pf perspective lately, I guess this birthday made me think. I have been drawn into thinking of age and years and events and time and places and happenings and things.
I think of something that happened in, say, 1999... then I think about how long ago the was. Then, to put that amount of time into perspective, I think about where,what, or who I was that same number of years before that event. In that case, you know, it winds up 1991. The same difference between the 1991 me and the 1999 me relative to 2007 me. Wow.
Of course, you can argue the changes slow down after, say, 23... growing up does bring a lot of changes...
All in all, in my inventory of self... I am happy about what I have accomplished as a performer, still impassioned to do more. I am happy about the many friends I have shared time with, and recognize that an occasional note on myspace or facebook is not sufficient to honor those friendships, those which somehow don't fade into acquaintance despite huge lapses of time between contact. I am regretful of wrongs done, and I am regretful of loved ones lost. I only recently realized how deeply the loss of my grandmother, almost four years ago, affected me. I have been blessed with some amazing, life-altering experiences thanks to travel and performing in the past few years.
All this soul-searching and all these soft-smiling memories have flashed by me, lately, and it has led me to one unalterable truth:
I'm really jazzed that Halo 3 is coming out soon.
Man, I am such a geek.
Oh yeah, I have to recommend a book: THE LOVELY BONES, which I think I just heard Peter Jackson is making into a film soon. I just read it, it's hauntingly beautiful. I envy whoever gets to play the father in that film. Take my word that it isn't as Mitch-Albomy as it might sound in reading the jacket. Nothing against Mitch Albom, but this isn't that.
Dusty - my best and oldest friend in the world, more like a brother than a friend - saw that book as I plopped it down on his table last night and was about to make fun of me for it before he read the jacket. Then he relented and played MADDEN 08, shouting at players onscreen in the office as I played 360 in his living room.
Going now. Damn, it's hot outside. I will probably edit this down later, hateful of my own verbosity.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Superman, where are you now?
I am tired of having to explain things like this story to my friends abroad.
Anyhoo...
For my birthday, I got some amazing books - that I always recommend to anyone who hasn't really read comics as an adult. I got these nicely bound, expensive, "Absolute" editions of these books, but pick up their cheaper paperback trades if you want to try them out.
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Kingdom Come by Alex Ross and Mark Waid
Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
Other stuff to come. Currently watching the Sopranos for the first time, from the beginning. I'm on season two.
Beginning to think about/work on where I'll go next workwise. Nothing of note to post here, lately... just thought I should post something so it's clear I'm still alive. You know, like Osama Bin Laden does.
Anyhoo...
For my birthday, I got some amazing books - that I always recommend to anyone who hasn't really read comics as an adult. I got these nicely bound, expensive, "Absolute" editions of these books, but pick up their cheaper paperback trades if you want to try them out.
Watchmen by Alan Moore
Kingdom Come by Alex Ross and Mark Waid
Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
Other stuff to come. Currently watching the Sopranos for the first time, from the beginning. I'm on season two.
Beginning to think about/work on where I'll go next workwise. Nothing of note to post here, lately... just thought I should post something so it's clear I'm still alive. You know, like Osama Bin Laden does.
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