Monthly Archives: December 2009

Happy New Year’s Eve!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

May your 2010 be happy, healthy & full of success!

See you next year!

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End of the Year Blog

This is a fun little year end questionnaire that I stole from the lovely Rene Bordelon which she stole from another blogger who stole it from another blogger and I imagine it will be stolen from me as well.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
I saw the redwoods.  24 years in California and I had never been.  There are things you don’t realize will impress you until you visit them and nature regularly does that to me.  I’m not a camping guy and I consider myself a city-boy but when you’re looking at ancient trees that are as tall as buildings it affects you.  It was a reality check too.  I had heard of the General Sherman tree before, but seeing it was at first a bit disappointing (I imagined it being as large as the Empire State Building – like I said I’m a city-boy) but then seeing a branch that had fallen off of the General that was 50 feet tall… It was mind blowing.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next this year?
I don’t make them.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Uh, yeah.  Rene’s friend Karen had a baby boy, my friend Darcy had a baby girl, my friend Liz had a girl and my sister had her second boy!  And that’s just counting people in the state.  My cousin had her first boy… actually I think there were two cousins who had kids this year?  One of my students.  There were lots of kids.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, but there were quite a few deaths.

5. What countries did you visit?
I didn’t leave the country this year.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Money.  Money for films.  Money for me.  Money in general.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
May 23rd, the day we got confirmation that the initial funding fell through  for “Cheerleaders Must Die!”  But it also started the process that has allowed the project to grow into something much bigger than we originally planned, so it’s a mixed bag.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
New, effective business relationships.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Well, there was no funding for any film projects this year.  That sucked.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
A minor case of swine flu and the wimpiest case of strep throat ever.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
I don’t buy things, I have debt to pay, but I was able to get Rene an HD Flip cam for her documentary, and that was pretty cool.

12. Where did most of your money go?
Debt, food, debt.

13. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Work!  When I was actually working it was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!  Sundance was GREAT!  Christmas was GREAT!  And being with Rene and Frankie!

14. What song will always remind you of 2009?
I know it’s a Lady Gaga song, “Paparazzi”, “Poker Face” or “Bad Romance.”

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Happier
b) thinner or fatter?
Heavier but more fit.
c) richer or poorer?
Much, much poorer in finances and much richer in relationships.

16. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Found more financing.

17. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Sitting around wondering what to do.

18. How did you spend Christmas?
Spent Christmas Eve with Rene’s family and spent Christmas day with mine. All was good.

19. Did you fall in love in 2009?
No. I was already in love and stayed that way.

20. What was your favorite TV program?
Doctor Who, what there was of it, Castle, Attack of the Show, V, Glee, and I feel like there’s more but I don’t remember.

21. What was the best book you read?
This year I didn’t complete a single book.  It is sad.

22. What was your favorite film of this year?
If I’m picking one as my favorite then I choose “District 9”.

23. What did you do on your birthday?
I don’t remember!  Yikes!

24. What kept you sane?
I don’t know that anything did.

25. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I didn’t, but I have a high regard for Lady Gaga and how she does her stuff.

26. Who did you miss?
No one, I hit everyone I aimed at.

Doesn’t seem like much of a year once you write it down.  It wasn’t a bad year, but it wasn’t exceptional either.  I’m looking forward to 2010.

See you tomorrow!

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Curtis is Gettin’ Political!

I’m not a fan of the TSA.  The farce they call “security” stirs a righteous anger in me that is only matched by… well actually there are things that make me significantly more upset, but I don’t like the TSA.  This is an article that talks about why better than I can.

President Obama it’s time to fire the TSA.

President Obama, It’s Time To Fire the TSA

Today, DHS’s Napolitano’s response to the crotchbomber: “We’re looking to make sure that this sort of incident cannot recur.” But the TSA’s response to Abdulmutalib’s attempt makes one thing clear: We must stop pretending the TSA is making us safer.
Security expert Bruce Schneier nails the core incompetency: “For years I’ve been saying ‘Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.'”
So what has the TSA done in response to the attempted attack? They’ve told airlines to make passengers stay in their seats during the last hour of flight. They’ve made it verboten for passengers to hold anything in their laps, again only during the last hour of flight. Perhaps most hilariously telling, they’ve forbidden pilots from announcing when a plane is flying over certain cities and landmarks.
There is no other way to interpret it: The TSA is saying clearly that they can’t prevent terrorists from getting explosives on airplanes, but by god, they’ll make sure those planes explode only when the TSA says it’s okay.
I want our government to prevent terrorism and to make flights safer. But we are spending billions of dollars and man-hours to fight a threat that is less likely to kill a traveler than being struck by lightning. In the last decade, according to statistician Nate Silver, there has been “one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown [the] equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.” (Sadly, this does mean that in the future we can expect one out of every two round-trip flights to Neptune to be hijacked.)
The TSA isn’t saving lives. We, the passengers, are saving our own. Since its inception, the TSA has been structured in such a way as to prevent specific terror scenarios, attempting to disrupt a handful of insanely specific tactics, while continuing to disenfranchise and demoralize the citizens who are actually doing the work that a billion-dollar government agency—an agency that received an additional $128 million just this year for new checkpoint explosive screening technology—has failed to do.
We just had the first legitimate attempted attack in years, and the TSA changes the threat level from orange…to orange.
This goes far beyond simple customer satisfaction issues like “Take Back Takeoff.” (Although they are of a kind.) It has to do with wildly irrationally response of a government agency in the face of failure. An agency whose leader, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, said at first blush that the attempted attack showed that—here comes the Katrina-class foot-in-mouth—”the system worked.” (She shoveled shit in her mouth this morning, while still talking up the asinine new measures that the TSA will be taking to respond to this isolated threat.)
I don’t want to die on an airplane. I don’t want to die in my home while eating an organic bagel infested with parasites that lay eggs on my liver. I don’t want to die from starvation or bad water or a thousand other things that I pay our government to monitor and regulate.
But I also don’t expect the government to protect from the literally endless possibilities and threats that could occur at any point to end my life or the life of the few I love. It’s been nearly a decade since terrorists used airplanes to attack our country, and last week’s attempt makes it clear that the lack of terrorist attacks have nothing to do with the increasing gauntlet of whirring machines, friskings, and arbitrary bureaucratic provisions, but simply that for the most part, there just aren’t that many terrorists trying to blow up planes. Because god knows if there were, the TSA isn’t capable of stopping them. We’re just one bad burrito away from the TSA forcing passengers to choke back an Imodium and a Xanax before being hogtied to our seats.
President Obama, don’t let this attack—this one attack that was thankfully stopped by smart, fearless passengers and airline staff—take us further in the wrong direction. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Americans of all stripes and affiliation standing up to say, “This isn’t working. We gave you our money. You’re not making us safer.” We appreciate the attempt to make us safer and acknowledge that it came from an honest attempt to protect American (and the rest of the world’s) lives.
But it’s a failure. It’s wrongheaded. It’s a farce. Tear it down. Put the money towards the sort of actions at which our government excels, like intelligence. The failure of the TSA leaves us no choice, but it’s okay. The American people are ready to take back the responsibility for our own safety. Really, we already have.

Send an email to Joel Johnson, the author of this post, at joel@gizmodo.com.

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Mid-Holiday Lull

It’s that weird time between Christmas and New Years where it’s still kind of a holiday, but it’s also a half-assed work week.  I let myself sleep in this morning and then hopped right to work as soon as I work up (ah, the benefits of working from home) but, while there are a few “busy work” assignments that need to get done, there isn’t all that much that I can be proactive about on the bigger projects.  It’s a bit frustrating, but relieving at the same time, there’s only so much that can get done and, as long as I do those things, I really can’t be mad at myself.

What is this lull like for you?  I bet you folks in retail have no slow points in the immediate future!  And what about regular business?  Is this a wasted week?  Leave a comment about your lull time – I’d like to know.

See you tomorrow!

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It’s Late, But It’s SO COOL!!!!!

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December: I may not have been writing, but I was active!

Hey y’all, it’s December 26th and I have been a poor blogger, but I’m not going to waste space complaining about that.  Instead I’m going to wax on about other stuff. 

For example December was SHOCKINGLY BUSY!!!  I can be counted on to be a bit of an exaggerator, it’s a specialty of mine, but I was truly caught off guard by how much activity December tried to contain, and the holidays did nothing to slow it down!  I did a play this month, a Christmas show titled “Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart, But The Very Next Day You Said You Were Gay” for Theater Out in Santa Ana, CA.  I played the only straight guy in the show.  It has been a Christmas tradition for Theatre Out for three years and the show is really funny and a lot of fun!  With any luck it will run again next year!

Business-wise there’s been a lot going on – the hunt for film funding never ends and there have been a lot of in roads made… that I can’t actually talk about until they are finalized.  It’s a bit like the space program, for every successful launch there have to be 100 failures.  The good news is we’re running out of ways to fail, 2010 is looking good.

The holidays, including both Thanksgiving and Christmas were wonderful – quick but wonderful.  Christmas in particular had the same feel to it that the Christmases of the past used to have.  I was a very giddy adult this year and it has set me up really well for the new year.

Now I’m going to go eat and then Rene and I have some stuff to shoot – YouTube stardom here we come!

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Mobile Blog: The First Step…

Anything worth doing is worth & requires some risk. There is no way around that. Playing it safe leads to less than extraordinary results, if it leads to any results at all. It's a lesson that is not taught in school. In fact they teach the exact opposite, they train you to get a simple, safe job that, while not satisfying, will, in theory, remain stable.

The new economy has proven that playing it safe is far from being so.

My statement about risk is nowhere near new or revolutionary, but it bears repeating because it is a chronically unlearned lesson. People refuse to take necessary risk.

I'm not talking about irresponsible risk, like unprotected sex or dumping your savings into a get rich scheme, I'm talking about calculated risk. "Looking before you leap" and "taking the leap" do not need to be mutually exclusive cliches.

I know a lot of people with good ideas. Too many of them will not take the first step. There will be plans and discussions and more plans and then more discussion and by the time the idea dies there's been way more talk than any kind of action. Oddly enough this is how most people in Hollywood operate, all talk but no action. Any body can talk, we all do, and we can sound brave and convincing when we do it, but it is meaningless without the action to back it up. Words without deeds are empty and meaningless.

So I ask, as have so many self-help professionals past, present and future, that you take action – just take that first step. The satisfaction is indescribable and will help motivate further action. There's a reason it is clichéd advice and that's because it both works and is so simple. All it takes is beating that little bit of fear that holds you back. Once you get past it there is nothing, literally nothing, you can't do.

Take the first step, each step after is that much easier.

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

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Mobile Blog: Inspiration

I take inspiration from a lot of things. Back in my teens & early 20's it mostly sprang from the music I liked.

I was iPoding, that's a verb now, & the shuffle came up on a song that I used to love & now I'm a bit embarrassed to listen to. I won't even name it here because it will invite the ire of people who know me too well, but I remember how it used to really drive me. It made me go back & listen to other songs from the late 90's that, at the time, seemed to sooooo describe my life at the time & now they sound, well let's just say that if that's what my life was then it's no wonder I was drinking all the time.

So now I've been looking at what currently inspires me just to make sure I'm not going to embarrass myself later & it has shown me that inspiration, regardless of how embarrassing it may be, is a really personal thing & doesn't need to make any sense. For example I was totally inspired today by a homeless man who was really grateful that I gave him my left over garlic bread. It might not seem like something to get inspired by, but it totally did the job.

So, to bring this blog to a point, & a close, I want to send my hope to all of you that you find inspiration anywhere you are. It's there if you're open to it & it's worth taking the time to find it.

See you tomorrow!

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

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Mobile Blog: It Seemed Like Such a Good Idea at the Time…

If there's one thing that seems to stick in my mind about this year is my trouble with the different computers in my life.

My current trouble, which I hope I'm not bugging you with, is… Actually I have no idea what it is.

All I know is that it's frustrating & annoying!

I have to go teach now, but I'll write again later.

I miss posting regularly.

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

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Mobile Blog: The Joys of an Audition Waiting Room

After over 20 years of professional acting you get used to the atmosphere of a waiting room. I remember when I was 8 years old being at a commercial audition and next door they were casting for Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" video. That is the first time I remember seeing guys hitting on girls at an audition & also the same day that I first smelled the stench of desperation. It's a pungent stink that is part of the actor's life.

Now that I have casted things and produced things, even though they weren't blockbusters, I have gained a new perspective that comes along with no longer relying on someone else for your career (although, to be perfectly honest, I am very happy to let someone else help with my career – this is really hard work!). It is easier now to go to auditions without feeling the same tension that I see in other actors in a room.

There are few things as self conscience as an actor, male or female. Will I get hired? Was I funny? Am I making the right choices? The questions never end and if you aren't careful you can drive yourself crazy. As easy as people think the job is the fact remains if being a good actor were easy everybody would do it.

Today I was at a call-back for a commercial. It was a good audition for me, but it was running about an hour behind schedule. Nothing frees an actors insecurities than sitting in a room with 30 other actors that are all your competition for longer than 10 minutes. It was an excellent demonstration of restraint and coping mechanisms. Personally I text and Tweet when I don't have anyone to talk to. Other guys start spouting off their resumes like anyone else cares and I even saw a knife pulled today, no joke! I did not hear the conversation that happened when it was pulled, but it looked to me like he was illustrating a point with a friend of his, of course no one else seemed to know that so a few nerves got frayed. Who brings a knife to an audition?! Talk about "cutting out" the competition! That was supposed to be a joke.

Anyhow, that's my babble for today. I will ramble more again tomorrow.

See you tomorrow!

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

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