Last update on 12/23/2006

My life so far in extremely abridged format. (It may look long but that is extremely abridged for recounting your whole life!)

December 28, 1970,

I emerge from the womb with hopes, dreams, machinations, plans, plots, schemes, and a lot of slimy stuff all over me.

I was born and raised in Bryan/College Station, Texas. My mother was involved in community theatre, and pretty much from the time I was born she was bringing me along with her to rehearsals, thus sowing the seeds of my future passions. I became involved in acting pretty much as soon as I could walk and form coherent thought.

When I was 12 or somewhere around there, I really became aware of my love for music. My late uncle, Jim, was a great guitar player and was always listening to music around the house. Beatles, Billy Joel, and about everything else from jazz to folk to rock and all points in between. He taught me a few guitar chords and from there I started learning everything I could. I would put on my favorite albums and learn to play along. After learning some basic piano from him also, I continued to teach myself guitar and piano by playing along with recordings, and reading a book on music theory. I would eventually pick up bass guitar, drums, and anything else I could get my hands on. Saxophone, mandolin, harmonica, anything that struck me. I started playing in bands around the age of 15. At this point I started to (timidly) sing. Over the years, I played in many bands, developing my confidence, and my singing, performing, and playing abilities.

Over the years my passions were divided between acting and music. I would play in a band for a while, and then when it broke up, I would get back into acting for a while and then another band would come along and so forth. Around 1994 (I think) I joined the Rock-A-Fellas, a cover band that was fairly well established in the area. Over the years we continued to grow in popularity, and today are one of the most popular and sought after bands in our area.

In 1999, I decided to move on to bigger opportunities. I moved to Dallas, TX. For the time being I was still driving the 3 hour drive back to College Station to play shows with the band on the weekends. While in Dallas, I had some great opportunities working as a production assistant on some film and television projects as well as having small acting roles in an independent movie called "House Of The Generals", as well as being an extra on many episodes of "Walker, Texas Ranger", although all my parts ended up on the editing room floor. However it was cool to be able to look myself up in the Internet Movie Database. Unfortunately, I didn't really have time to get myself established and working on a regular basis (I also worked several jobs in the computer industry there), and so due the fact that the band was doing so well, and I was sick of driving back and forth all the time, I hesitantly moved back to College Station in 2000, feeling a bit defeated. I got a great job as a computer support engineer, and continued to play with my band. I also setup my home computer as a recording studio and started to record my own songs (which can be found in the "Musician" section of this website). I also started writing a screenplay based on a story which all started with a dream that my friend, Andy had. It's about half done, and I feel very guilty for not working on it more ambitiously, but one of my tragic flaws is my laziness, and the fact that I dream far more than I actually take action. I'm trying to change that.

June 14, 2001

I'm perusing www.buffyguide.com, a website about the show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and posting on the message board, known as The Watcher's Diary. I had been a member there for about a year. I posted a silly message, and later a user named "bigmouth" replied to my post telling me about this dream that she'd had. In this dream, I was infatuated with her, which we both found odd and amusing since although she had been a member of this board for about 8 months, we had never really spoken or had any interaction, and in fact really didn't know each other at all. This led to several back and forth posted messages in which there was a strange, yet incredible, and unbelievable chemistry. She then came in to the chat room there, where I also happened to be, and we started chatting along with several other members. There was definitely something magical between us. It was immediately as if we'd known each other all our lives and were best friends. We continued to instant message each other after this first meeting. Now we had both known many people who got together on the internet, and while we wished them the best of luck, neither one of us particularly understood how you could feel that way based on only knowing someone via the internet. I, in fact had said as much to many of my friends some of which had met their significant others on the net (and they subsequently made sure I ate my words). However, we both knew after meeting each other that somehow, we now understood. 6 days after that first "meeting" we confessed our mutual, undeniable feelings and became a couple, a thing, an item, partners in crime, a duo, (insert your favorite couply term here). We're still members at buffyguide, but she's changed her name to Fuchsia, and I'm Nos402. Oh and I think it bears mentioning that she lives in England.

In September of 2001, she came to visit me in Texas. It was everything we knew it would be and more. She got here on September 9. On September 11, at about 7:45 am, she was getting out of the shower and suddenly fainted. I heard the noise, and found her on the floor...with 2 of her teeth laying beside her on the floor. I freaked out just a little, and called an ambulance. She was conscious and seemed to be fine aside from missing 2 teeth, and having 2 more loose in her mouth, and having a split lip. On the way to the hospital was the first I heard of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that had happened at pretty much the same moment she fainted (weird, eh?). I heard it on the radio, and asked the ambulance driver what was going on. They stitched her lip up in the ER, then we went to an oral surgeon who took out the 2 remaining loose teeth and stitched her up. For the remainder of her visit she didn't have any top 4 front teeth. She now has a lovely set of teeth that, as a bonus (and a party trick), she can remove at will! In November 2001, I went to England to visit her. We stayed in London, visited her parents in Stoke-On-Trent, and went to a party in Edinburgh. As we were waiting for my plane in Edinburgh, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. She came back to Texas in December for a visit, and I went back to the UK in March.

We got married on November 9, 2002 at The Texas Renaissance Festival!

In August of 2003 we moved to Austin, TX with no jobs lined up and no money saved up. Somehow we managed to survive for a couple of months on my meager musician/actor earnings and with the help of very generous friends and family. Austin is everything we hoped it would be. A great place to live, and very creatively fulfilling. In the first three months, I got involved in more projects (acting, recording, writing, etc.) than in the past 10 years.

Update: April 8, 2005
After about 4 months of barely scraping by, I got a job at a tech support call center. It was one of those jobs where you count the seconds until you can leave and then count the seconds until you have to go back. Jess got her first job in U.S. working retail. What an induction! Soon we were both happy with life, but miserable in our jobs. When the misery became too much she quit her job since it was only part time and we could survive on mine. She started doing temp work, as I grew more and more weary with each day at my job.

During this time, my cousin, Casey, who works at the computer science department at the University of Texas informed me that they were starting their own annual Film Festival. I set about writing, directing and starring in my own short film (it had to be under ten minutes). My first time at the helm of my own ship. I'm proud to say that though we had no budget, equipment, or production values, the material must have had some merit, as we won both "Best Film" and "People's Choice".

After not too long, Jess landed a nice temp part time job with a software development company where she did office and HR work. Soon part time became full time, and it looked as if it would eventually become permanent. Jess was happy there and quite liked the job and the company.

In the meantime, I'd had some interesting job developments. In addition to my acting, music, writing, and film/TV crew work, I had been really pursuing a certain video game company in Austin. Ever since we'd moved here I'd watched for openings and sent in my résumés, but had no luck. My lifelong friend, Andy, had just graduated art school in Houston and moved into the same apartment complex in Austin that we lived in. I had told him that he should try this company, and as it turned out they had an opening in the marketing art department. After many years suffering as a starving artist, Andy got hired at this company doing a job he enjoyed and making real money! We hoped that with him inside, maybe he could help me get on.

Later he forwarded me an email about one of the employees there casting a play to be performed at one of the company's legendary head honcho's parties. Jess and I both auditioned and were cast in the play. Through the experience, we became friends with several employees of the company I had been pursuing. Initially, I kept my aspirations a secret because I didn't want to seem like I was asking for anything or "using" our friends. When it did finally come out, my friends enthusiastically recommended me for an opening in the exact department in which I wanted to work. Being that I was a referral I was going to get an interview! I felt like my way out of my soul-sucking job in sight! As time went by and I didn't get the call I checked with my friends, who in turn checked with their manager, but I didn't want to be a pest, just as they didn't want to be a pest to their manager. After about a month or more, my friends checked back with manager who apparent had forgotten that I was a referral and already filled the position without interviewing me.

I was crushed. The rays of light, which had begun to creep over the horizon, were blotted out by gray storm clouds. Once Jess's job looked as if it was very likely going to be long term, we decided it was time for me to just quit my job. I was ecstatic. Life immediately became so much more enjoyable as I threw this giant carcass of a job off my back. A little over a week after I quit, I got the call that there was another position open at the company I wanted to work for, and in the same department as before. This time my friends made damn sure that my name got in there. I had an interview on Wednesday, and got the call on Friday asking me to come in and start work on Monday! Two weeks and three days after quitting my job, I was starting the job I had wanted since moving to Austin. Jess was also hired on full time at her job and at a real salary.

Update 12/23/2006
I wrote, directed and starred in my second short film for the second "Kinetoscopic Wonderment" film festival, and again won "people's choice". Jess' company ended up laying everyone off and she quickly moved to another job, which ended up totally sucking and screwing her around in many ways before she finally ended up working at the same company I work for. In 2005 we bought a new Toyota Prius (best car ever), and ended up buying a condo, the saga of which is detailed here. In 2006, I started writing, performing, and Assistant Directing the Austin Movie Show (see the "links" section for links to my work). It had all started when I had seen an email for a casting call looking for a Tom Cruise look-alike. The details of that story can be found here. The night that skit aired, I had gone to the studio to help out with the show and watch it being aired, and that's where I met Larry. He had just moved here from Louisiana and had heard they were looking for a Tom Cruise. As it happened, Larry looks a <em>lot</em> like Tom Cruise and does a hell of an impression, so I was damn lucky he hadn't responded earlier or I would never have got that role, met any of those people or been a part of the show. I also never would have met Larry. Larry and I immediately hit it off as the two new strangers to the set. By the end of the night people were asking if we'd known each other for years or were old friends or something because of our rapport. We pretty wuickly bonded as brothers and became creative partners in our writing and film making endeavors.

In June of 2006, I was part of some mass layoffs at our company. Luckily (or not depending on your view) Jess was spared, so she got to continue working in her decent, albeit completely unfulfilling job which was particularly fun in the resulting post-layoff stench-of-death atmosphere. While I really loved my job, I found that I wasn't nearly as upset as I thought I would be. I felt that I would take this turn of events and use it to my advantage. I had always said that while I loved my job, it was also a sort of prison because I would never leave my job to do the things I really wanted to be doing such as acting, film making and music. Well, now I had that chance.

I immediately started pouring all my energy into putting together an acting package to get an agent and some acting jobs, started networking and working film crew jobs in hopes to grow that into a career and basically started putting as many irons into as many fires and juggling as many balls in the air and other metaphors in hopes that at least one will take off into a career. To supplement the bank account I also did a medical research study with Larry who also moved in with Jess and I as a roommate. Six months down the road, and we have somehow miraculously kept all our bills paid and have some money in the bank. Maybe this whole artist thing can work out after all.

Stay tuned to my blog in the "Human" section for the lates updates, and much more detailed accounts of particular events!