March 2006

Since my stint as Tom Cruise, I've pretty much completely dived into to working with the Austin Movie Show. Not only do I help pitch ideas, write and perform, but I also help out producing the live show every Sunday night. It's taking a lot of my time but it's been really great coming up with ideas and pitching them to the group, and they seem to be well received. Last night we filmed my idea called "Good Actor? Bad Choice!" which will be a recurring bit about actors auditioning for roles for which they are completely wrong. When I pitched the idea, the specific example was Christopher Walken. At the time I did a passable Walken, but I figured we would get someone else who could nail it. After receiving a very good response from the group over the next week, we decided to film it with me doing my Walken. I worked my ass off trying to perfect it as I wanted it to be perfect. Before filming last night, I did nothing but work on my Walken impression for three hours. By the time I left the house, I felt very good about it. Not perfect, but hopefully funny enough to overlook that fact.

We were kind of pressed for time so I pretty much only got one take for each of the three fake auditions I had come up with, and while I don't feel I was quite as good as I could have been given a few more takes, hopefully it was passable. The crew all seemed to be having a hard time containing their laughter behind the camera, so that's a good sign. I did Walken auditioning for Inigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride", Milton in "Office Space", and Harry in "When Harry Met Sally." I'm working on getting copies of the tom Cruise bit and this one to get online for you all to see. The Tom Cruise bit can be seen if you check out this show via podcast. I'm not sure of the exact time where it appears so you'll have to find it in the show. I know it was right after the Jason Reitman interview, which led to some awkwardness as detailed in my article here.

To anyone in L.A., you lucky people have the chance to go see the brilliant Eddie Izzard:

Eddie will be performing on Weds, March 29 to Saturday april 1 at 9pm(March 2nd - 5th) at:

The Coronet Theatre
366 N. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90048

Tickets available starting Saturday, March 25 2006 at 12:00 noon PST.

TO BOOK CALL (US): 310.657.7377. NOW!

Secondly, if you really want something to puzzle your brain, check out this site. I'm totally addicted. this is not some simple internet game to pass the time. This takes serious brain work, detective skills, and thinking outside the box. In fact it takes thinking outside, inside, on top of, around, and next to the box. In fact you might need to break the box. I'm seriously addicted. At the time of this post I'm on level 11.

With much satisfaction I have completed my latest project. For the longest time, I've had this idea in my head to remake "Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles album "Revolver". The song has always been something special to me for many reasons. The original song was recorded using mostly tape loops taken from various orchestral compositions, sound effects, and any other tape The Beatles could get their razor blades on. Since they only had four track technology then, I've read accounts of how George Martin had every available person standing in every available space, such as closets, holding tape loops on the ends of pencils and such, so that he could fade them in and out throughout the song. I always thought that it would be fun to recreate the entire song, including all the strange tape loops, on guitar.

This became an even more interesting idea when I started using the Line 6 Variax digital modeling guitar which can emulate a whole studio full of guitars (including electrics, acoustics, banjo, 12-strings, and more), and the Line 6 Pod XT which digitally models amps, cabinets, effects, etc.

Here is the result of my mad scientist experiment (It's about 4MB). Aside from the vocal, drums and tambourine, everything you hear was done on guitar. Everything. Including the seagulls. And the bass. Everything. Hell, even the vocals got run through my Pod XT for the last verse. I am quite pleased. As is always the case with me, I feel I could do so much more work on it to make it better, but I was anxious to get it out there, and sometimes you just have to designate a stopping point. I'm sure there will be tweaking, as I'm already nitpicking it all to hell, but for the most part I'm fairly happy with it.

I'm contemplating a new cover for my ipod from iFrogz. There are so many cool designs that I've so far only narrowed it down to these 4 combinations. Cast your vote for your favorite now!

and the only prescription is more cowbell. Awesome.

If you don't know what this is all about, then just go to Youtube and search for "more cowbell." If it has Christopher Walken, Will Ferrell and cowbell, then you've found the right clip. An absolute classic.

Sadly, even though Saturday Night Live has had more exposure and free publicity than they've had in years from people posting popular and funny bits from the show, they've also been extremely aggressive in having unauthorized content removed from the internet due to copyright infringement.

I don't usually post all these personality test type of things, but I stumbled upon this one recently (thanks, Beth!) that I thought nailed me pretty good. In only two questions. Crazy, scary accurate (with a dew exceptions as usual). This seems to be the consensus of almost everyone I know who took the test. Yes, I know it could just all be coincidence, standard disclaimer, bogus, blah, blah, blah. So, get to know me! Also see the link in Beth's comment to a much more in depth description of my results.

Apparently I'm a 9 which means:

Previously I mentioned how much fun I had being psycho Tom Cruise and meeting this great bunch of people. It looks as if I may have fallen into something pretty cool, and definitely good for me. The skit I filmed was for The Austin Movie Show, which has been around for a while in various incarnations and currently airs on our Public Access station. It's mostly the two hosts reviewing and talking about movies, but also has a lot more thrown in such as the shorts we're starting to write and film now and some other segments.

If you want to truly know who I am as a person, check out these albums:

"Hey Album!" and "Ready, Sex, Go" by The Marvelous 3

"Left of Self Centered" and "Letters" by Butch Walker

I've decided that Butch Walker's catalog (including his work with Marvelous 3) is a pretty damn good representation of my soul if it were converted to music and packaged on CD. There is such a great range from rocking, funny, witty songs to intensely passionate and emotional songs which you feel as much as you listen to.

So apparently I missed "Blog Against Sexism" day. I don't really have anything in particular to say, but wanted to say something. We live in a time when sexism, racism, and all kinds of other isms have insidiously weaved themselves into the very fabric of our culture. So much so that many are completely blind to them.

As a species, we are very arrogant and think that we are the end all be all to life in the universe, when the truth is that we are not nearly as evolved as we would like to think. There is still far too much ignorance and intolerance in the world for us to be so high and mighty. I pretty much leave the crusading to my wife, but I guess I'll just boil it down to my simplest though here: there may be differences between men and women (not just physical but real differences in our makeup, the way we think, the way our brains are wired, who knows), but that is meaningless. That is true on an individual basis, not just a sex/race/whatever basis. Next time you find yourself about to apply a stereotype to someone, take a moment and think about it. Try to catch yourself forming preconceptions of people. We all do it. If we can catch even just one, and instead get to know someone for who they are and not who we think they are, then I think that's something good.

I think the irony is that anyone who finds themselves thinking that someone else is inferior because of their sex/race/etc is guaranteed to be the inferior one.

Yesterday I filmed my stint as Tom Cruise for a short parody to air on the Austin Movie Show. It was incredibly satisfying, and really moved me in a strangely deep and emotional way. Obviously it was great to get "back in the saddle" and just cut loose with some totally over the top acting, but it was the people that really made it for me. Maybe I'm just in some hyper-emotional frame of mind or something, but I just truly loved everyone I met yesterday. They all seemed like wonderful, fun, genuine people who I think I could connect with, and in a way, did. The show is just getting started and they seemed really open to any of us who wanted to be involved with the troupe to pitch ideas, brainstorm, just take some bit parts, or whatever level of involvement individual time and desire allowed.

I left feeling that I did an adequate acting job but that I could have done much better. Everyone seemed to be pleased and entertained though. I also left feeling a bit wistful and not really wanting to go because I wanted to get to know these people better. I guess we'll see what the future holds, but all in all it was a great experience, even if I am left a bit bewildered by my emotional response to it. I feel more deeply moved and touched than I feel I should from doing casual light little comedy piece with people I only just met. It's very bizarre. Even if I never see any of them again, I feel my life is richer for having met them.

Maybe this is just a side effect from tossing my inner creative passion monster a tasty morsel after having not fed it in a long, long time. It awoke from it's hibernation with a bug hunger. I will try to post or link to the skit as soon as I can get a copy.