And The Contest Winner is...

No one. No one has guessed correctly yet. The contest is still open. But a number of good questions have been raised so here’s some more info:

The DVD, sadly, is not porn. It’s a collection of my short films that have been on the SCI FI Channel, HBO, and various festivals and have lots of comedians and actors who I begged into being in them like Paul F. Tompkins, Jay Johnston, Dean Cameron, Jennifer Elise Cox and Andy Kindler. Clowns, Hitmen, Leprechauns, Living Suits, Killer donuts and other weirdness.

I was indeed a spotter for American Gladiators and had to go to the hospital when a two story pyramid ran over my foot. My first job in Hollywood. The glamour!

I proofread vitamin labels as a temp job. One day I had to take off to tape Evening at the Improv. The next day I was back to work.

I worked for the Daily Local News in West Chester, PA and had to check the various police blotters for crimes.

I worked at a deli counter after I got fired from K-mart. (ah, but which job? Or both?) Same shopping center. Same shopping center I’m doing a book signing at next Saturday, August 1. Chester County Book and Music Company in West Chester, PA.

I have worked as a video game tester for Activision on Empires and I have worked at EA on Command and Conquer 3. I'm actually in the credits.

I’ve worked as a temp in various offices. One I almost walked out when my boss looked at old pizza in the fridge and called to me from the other side of the office and told me to throw it away instead of actually reaching in six inches in front of him and doing it himself.

So the contest remains open. Keep commenting with your guesses on the previous thread and I’ll tell you when we have a winner.

Free Book or DVD Contest!

So I’m sitting in a hotel room in Vegas right now and I thought, why not have a little impromptu contest? Here's the deal: I’ve had many, many jobs. Here is the list. ONE of these jobs is a lie. I’m going to give a book OR DVD (your choice) to the first person who can figure out which job I never had. Leave a comment with your pick and the first one who gets it is the winner and can pick a free book or DVD. These are all things I got PAID to do. Except one. Okay, you can probably eliminate two of the choices right away due to what the actual prizes are…

K-Mart Checkout Supervisor
General Assignment Journalist
Crime Reporter
Spotter for the American Gladiators
Vitamin Label Proofreader
Sitcom writer
Production Assistant
Help Desk Tech Support
Screenwriter
Deli counter employee
Author
Music and Movie stock guy for Clover retail stores
Director
Soap Opera Writer
Stand-up Comic
Producer
Office Temp
K-Mart “cash cage” employee
Video Game Tester

Like I said, ONE of these jobs I've never had. Which is it? Cue Jeopardy theme...

What I've Learned About Blogging. So Far.

I really didn’t get it at first. I didn’t see the point. I also thought: Who would want to read a stream of consciousness from anyone, including me?

The thing is, I got a book deal and everyone immediately told me I had to have a blog. Why? To get a book deal. OK. No, wait--. Alright so I just learned I had done things in reverse. So I started a blog.

I didn’t like blogging at first and wasn’t even sure if I was doing it right. My posts were long; I would take days to write them and then go over and edit them before I posted them. OK, it may not seem like it, but I did. Then I realized it didn’t matter. You can do what you want. It’s your blog. I can talk about chicken wings if I want to and for as long as I want to. I’m not saying I won’t but ... OK we’ll see.

My only readers at first were my family and a few friends, and even then I think they were lying. I redesigned the blog and got some tips from the designer. “If you want people to read your blog, comment on other blogs.” Huh? I thought there were bloggers and readers, right? Wrong. Bloggers ARE readers. It’s a community and almost like a self-feeding ecosystem. Like those shrimp filled ecospheres you can get at Brookstone in the mall. Let me digress a moment here: I have one, and a while back I stupidly broke it while reaching for a light switch in the dark. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away so I called the company and they said to put the whole thing in Tupperware with water so I did.

There is one shrimp still alive and it is now older than my daughter. I’m guessing around 6 years old. When I lost my office to the new baby I had to move the shrimp into my daughter’s room. It’s still alive although she could care less about it. That’s the great thing though: Broken Ecosphere in water in Tupperware—no maintenance.

So I reluctantly blogged away and even guest blogged because I thought I was supposed to. But then something funny happened on the way to the forum. After a while I found I actually enjoyed blogging although I don’t update more than once or twice a week and interestingly, I feel like I’ve made some new friends. Bloggers meeting other bloggers, you feel like you’re virtually hanging out with them. That I didn’t expect and it’s pretty cool. I’m starting to get it now. Twitter, not so much, but blogging, yes.

I also got some help from some other bloggers and I have slowly adding them all to the links list on the right. You can visit them. They’re cool.

So thanks for stopping by and I’ll try and swing by your place periodically. After all, we have to keep the shrimp alive.

Two Random Thoughts

Couldn’t really gel a coherent blog post, so here are two random thoughts:

I bought Quark the TV series while the Virgin Megastore was going out of business. It was one of my favorite shows as a kid, even though there were only eight episodes. Intergalactic trash, a depressed robot and the Doublemint twins. Sounds great, right? Actually, no it doesn’t sound that great, and you know what, after watching it again, it really was one of the worst shows ever made. And yet, I enjoyed the nostalgia as I watched it. It was the visual equivalent of holding that old, moldy teddy bear from your youth and thinking it was the best toy ever. I wonder if that will happen to my kids with Dragon Tales.

SECONDLY, as we were driving home yesterday on Coldwater Canyon someone posted a sign that said “Whoever took my bowl of perennials, please return it.” This made us both burst out laughing. The time it would have taken to make the sign, you could have planted a new bowl of perennials. Time management, people.

If only it were that easy to fix things. With signs. “Whoever really stole the heiress’ jewelry and framed me for the job, please confess” “I’ve worked for years at the same menial job and would like a raise and a promotion” “Please stop telling me Ryan Reynolds is a star” “Get Jon and Kate or at least Paris Hilton off my television permanently” What would your sign say?

Hot Chicks Beating the Shit Out of Each Other

Now, I’m home during the day with the baby. I know that first sentence doesn’t really match the blog entry title, but stay with me. It will. Like I said, I’m home with the baby. In order to pass the time during bottle feedings I put the TV on and browse through Time Warner Cable’s lame and random on-demand programming selections. This one fateful day, I stumbled upon the music section which had videos of bands I had never heard of. Granted it’s been a while since I’ve been up on the latest bands, but what the hell. I’ll check it out. Choose Rock, Metal, got it.

I stumbled on a video by Rev Theory called “Light it Up.” I was like a deer caught in headlights. The band was playing in some kind of basement but it was like some kind of fight club, but with hot chicks. You heard me. Hot chicks drinking bottles of vodka and then beating the shit out of each other. Scantily clad, of course. And the band was old school metal.

All the staples were there: screaming, long hair, tattoos, partying, implied alcohol and drug use. Okay, maybe not so much implied as overt. And they were clearly having the time of their lives. I realized that I had just seen the first almost anti-post modern heavy metal testosterone drenched video fantasy. Sex AND violence at the exact same time! Like video peanut butter and chocolate for guys. Of course if they could have added actual peanut butter and chocolate… OK, maybe the sequel.

I couldn’t tell you what the song was about. I couldn’t even really make out or remember one word of it. Al I know is that the video was… viscerally absurd... and it reached in and grabbed my brain through the eyeballs.

Just one note to the director: When you’re shooting fight sequences, even fake girl on girl pugilism, film your “actresses” from an angle where we can’t see the near misses during punch fests, OK? Quit making it harder for me to suspend disbelief!

At one point one the well endowed chicks gets knocked down. She gets back up, grabs her large breasts in defiance and comes back swinging. Damn! I felt a warm glow inside. What could be more patriotic than a hot blonde chick with big tits who won't stay down?

I watched the video multiple times, for various reasons. It was mesmerizing every time. I think I learned something at the end. I’m not sure what, but I think it has something to do with the fact that while I just saw the perfect music video, if I ever saw my daughter in one like this I would probably hang myself.

I Did My First National Radio Show...

I did my first national radio show last week. I’ll cut to the chase: It was a disaster. Being a comic, I’m no stranger to radio. I’ve done a fair amount of it over the years and I’ve been doing some to promote the book. But this was a big national one and I was really excited about it.
I got up crazy early, did a Baltimore station which you can hear here:

http://wbal.com/apps/news/templates/story.aspx?articleid=29525&zoneid=9

Which was fun.

Then I did another one. I’m not even going to name it because I don’t want you to try and find an archive to hear how awful it was. But I was excited, and I had even taken a class about “Impact in Media” and I had my notes with me. I was in the garage by the phone ready to go.

So I was ready. Or so I thought. So my segment began and the host talked over me the whole time. I thought the whole point of having a guest on was to let him talk. So I was a little off guard and the few sentences I did get through sounded nervous and disjointed. Needless to say my message did NOT get out. I would be surprised if one person bought the book from that “interview.” It lasted less than two minutes.

But that wasn’t all. I wanted to know why the whole interview felt so off so I got an archive of the show from the website. Maybe it sounded better than I thought. Nope. It didn’t sound like anything at all. When I listened to my segment from the archive, I realized something even worse. I wasn’t being talked over. I was still on hold half the time I was talking. I wasn’t talking to an audience, I was talking to the equivalent of a very attentive dial tone. I had gotten up at 3:30 am to talk to myself which I could have and often do anyway in the privacy of my own bedroom. Quietly of course, as to not wake up the wife.

The thing is, as horrible as it was, would I do it again? Yes. It’s so hard to get your message out that even if you have less than 30 seconds MAYBE you can get it through. Advertisers do it all the time. And it’s difficult to get air time if you’re not a celebrity or a politician in the middle of a scandal. So you take what you can get and try and make the best of it.

So lesson learned. I think. It may have something to do with learning to talk faster or trying to psychically determine if you are on hold or not. Actually, I’m not really sure I learned anything. You know, I often think I’m learning a lesson even when I’m not. I think it’s some type of defense mechanism for being slightly detached from reality. I don’t know how useful it is, but it’s like having cool refreshing rationalization always on tap. Bartender…

Rebel Girl

I’ve wanted to buy the video game Rock Band for a while but it was kinda pricey, like over $180! So when I saw that the Hollywood Virgin Megastore was going out of business I jumped in like a vulture eyeing an overturned stagecoach. There is was, Rock Band 2 for the Playstation 3 discounted to around $90. Score! Audge gave me “the look” but then also realized it looked like fun and approved the purchase.

So we got it home and it took forever to setup the guitar, drums, and microphone and figure out how to work everything. But then we were off! I played guitar, Audge played the drums, and Bella sang (even though she can’t read yet) and Griffin bounced happily in the jumparoo.

Bella’s favorite song was Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, the most ironically named band ever. At first she liked the song because they played it so much at pre-school. OK, it was cheesy when it first came out (we all knew it back then) and I have to say it works perfectly in a pre-school environment. “Music for little ears” as the annoying Baby-Einstein sales pitch goes.

But then, Bella discovered another song by Bikini Kill called Rebel Girl. Then all of a sudden something clicked in her four year old brain. She had never heard music like this before. Between The Wiggles and 80’s Pop at pre-school, Rise Against and Coldplay from me and Michael Jackson and Chaka Khan from my wife, there really wasn’t any screeching Grrrrl (I’m never sure how many “R”s to put) power punk anthems that had reached her little girl being. Until now.

She wanted to do the song again over and over and over and over. She got good at it. I didn’t even have to use the guitar save at all. She was even learning all the words. Thankfully, Rock Band omits certain words and phrases that would cause some uncomfortable conversations, so she doesn’t need to know about them just yet. Let her learn cursing and derogatory slang in school, the way we did.

Through music and a video game, I think I got a glimpse of what was to come. It was a weird moment, and you never know when those moments are going to occur. At that moment I knew our daughter would grow up to be powerful, willful and strong. She would be her own woman and follow her own path. I also knew the teen years were going to be a real pain in the ass. Thankfully I still have almost 10 years to prepare. By then we should have brain-chip tracking systems installed, right? Whatever the future holds, I know it will be a blast and I’ll always be there for my little Rebel Girl.