Role Playing

While I’m not technically a certified movie agent – like I’m “technically” not certified a “doctor” even though that poor man with the internal bleeding problem thought I was – I do have some very important advice for all aspiring actors that have stumbled across this wee site.

When you start off in a career in acting, it’s probably wise to take any role that comes your way.

In the competitive world of the silver screen, opportunity rarely stops by once you get past the high school stage productions and local theater art houses. With so many unemployed actors and very few available jobs, you never know where your big break will come from. It could be in a Shakespearean play or a part in a television commercial. It could be as insignificant as “man walking down street” with a whole 10 seconds of screen time. It doesn’t matter, because it’s a start to hopefully bigger things to come.

Despite the desperation you may be feeling as an unemployed actor….I would probably pass on the genital herpes role.

The potential typecasting from the genital herpes gig is just not worth it. This isn’t the type of role that you can easily live down either. In fact, some even say there is no cure for this role and that it’s a permanent stain on your imdb.com filmography.

The more I think about it, not a lot of scripts are being written with the genital herpes lady in mind. At least none that I’m aware of. Trust me when I say, the genital herpes role is probably just a one shot deal anyways which, ironically, is probably how some people got genital herpes to begin with.

From what I have seen, despite the unglamorous and somewhat embarrassing nature of the role, there appears to be more than enough people willing to accept being part of these commercials. I see the commercials everyday. Personally, I think they are a bit overplayed. Yet every television season, some new pill comes along with a new commercial. And somewhere out there, an actor is holding the script, thinking about the fame and fortune that is surely to follow. Behind that actor is a greedy agent, trying to sell the aspiring thespian the motto: Genital Herpes, the Springboard to the Stars!!!

Not only are there actors accepting these roles, but these commercials must also have directors, producers, set designers, costume designers, and even casting directors. I suspect that being a casting director for an STD commercial might be one of the more bizarre and depressing jobs in show business.

Sitting on a coach in a small room, you can watch unknown after unknown step into the room and proclaim how they are having a genital herpes outbreak at that very moment, yet you can’t tell, can you?

After taking some notes, the casting director gets to look an aspiring actor in the eye and say, “I’m sorry, but genital herpes is not for you.” It takes a special casting director to say that with such sincerity. Not everyone can act as if that’s a bad thing. Then again, not everyone can act. It doesn’t matter if it’s a commercial or a television show. Somehow, bad movies are still being made. Either no one is reading the scripts or they just don’t care.

It’s a movie. People watch movies. This can lead to more movies! A flawed logic if there ever was one.

Probably no genre has seen more bad movies made then the horror genre, the genre with such a clear defined set of clichés. People chuckle when they see that the black guy is the first person killed. And they joke afterwards if the black guy somehow manages to make it through the whole movie.

“I didn’t see that coming,” they say.

Despite the cliché, it’s still a reliable device used by many script writers. When receiving the scary movie script, does the African American actor look at the script and think, “Geez, I hope I’m not the black guy.” It doesn’t bode well for him considering he only received the first nine pages of the script.

He would be wise to car pool to the set with the two young actors scheduled to have sex in the woods (perhaps a career in television commercials awaits the lovebirds?). Their stay on set shouldn’t last too long either.

If they want, they can probably get Val Kilmer to drive the car home, whose script we can only assume got lost in the mail. I can just picture Mr. Kilmer’s agent, trying to convince his client that the only chance to revive his once promising career is to hope it burns when he pees.

Deja Vu Strikes Again

For lunch, I decided to order a sandwich from a local deli. A woman answered the phone on the other end and promptly informed me that they had run out of white bread. Which was unfortunate due to the integral role that two slices of bread play in making a respectable sandwich.

It was noon. Lunch time. And they were out of white bread.

I wanted to order the pastrami, but I was afraid as to where they were going to put it. Clearly it wasn’t going between two slices of white bread.

This was as ridiculous as pulling up to a Dairy Queen drivethru when the vanilla ice cream machine isn’t working and being forced to order an ice cream cake, only easy on the ice cream.

I Scream, You Scream…

With summer coming to a close, so too does the number of days left to enjoy an ice cream cone. You can certainly order ice cream in the winter, but nothing beats a large cone on a hot summer night. As your tongue races around the cone, trying to prevent every drip from falling past the cone, you try to savor the frozen treat before the temperature takes control.

Feeling in the mood, my brother and I stopped at a Dairy Queen on the way home from an amusement park, where much amusement was had!!! While waiting in the drive through, we could hear what the car in front of us was ordering. We could also hear what the Voice crackling out of the speaker box was saying as well. From our car, it almost sounded as if they were out of vanilla ice.

But this was a Dairy Queen.

(It was a Dairy Queen, right?)

(Yes, I just checked. It was a Diary Queen and still is a Diary Queen for that matter.)

The minivan pulled up to the front window and it was finally our turn to order. A couple of blizzards, a couple of sundaes. I was thinking about a milkshake, maybe even a cone. I wasn’t sure; I was still deciding.

The Voice came on and asked for our order.

“Two small Oreo blizzards,” my brother said.

“I’m sorry, is it okay if we made that with chocolate instead. Our vanilla ice cream isn’t working,” the Voice said, as if the vanilla ice cream machine woke up this morning and decided to call in sick. Diary Queen shouldn’t be allowed to have an inoperable vanilla ice cream machine. It’s like pulling up to a gas station and seeing plastic bags covering all the pumps. It’s a gas station. There should be plenty of gas. If there’s no gas at the gas station, then there’s very little reason to even have a gas station. I could certainly pull into the pharmacy across the street, but I doubt that would solve my fuel deficiency problem.

After coming to grips with the lack of vanilla ice cream, we started again from the top.

“We’ll have two small Oreo blizzards,” there was a dramatic pause. “And could we get those with chocolate ice cream instead?” There was just the slightest hint of sarcasm that wisped right over the Voice’s head.

This was absurd. It’s Diary Queen and they have no vanilla ice cream. Sundaes, slushies, and blizzards all rely on vanilla ice cream for their existence. Sitting in their freezer must have been boxes of hollow Dilly Bars, with just the chocolate shell and no ice cream.

With no vanilla ice cream, I had very few choices. So I went with the next best thing. “I’ll have a small twist cone.”

“Uhhh….” There was definite confusion in the Voice’s voice. “Our vanilla machine isn’t working today.”

“That’s why I got the twist instead.”

At that moment, the Voice’s head exploded.

I could have set off a riot if I tried to order a vanilla milkshake.

No vanilla, no twists. There wasn’t much left to put on a cone at Diary Queen. Now, they still had the chocolate machine working. But I felt like having a Blizzard (I was definitely going the cookie dough route that night). And Blizzards were born with vanilla ice cream in mind.

I was a little hesitant about having a chocolate ice cream Blizzard so I looked for alternatives. A hamburger probably wouldn’t fit on a cake cone. I guess I could have gotten a waffle cone, but I just wasn’t feeling it that night.

A hot dog would have definitely fit in the cone, but there would have been this uneasiness around me as I sat there, licking a frankfurter out of a cone.

That would be awkward.

I had no idea what to order. It was like going to the local Domino’s Pizza when the pizza making machine isn’t working and being forced to order the

Salvation Delivered at 3:00 AM

Nobody likes sitting around at home while the rest of the town is out having the time of their life. But there is not a more powerful antidote against this sad realization than late night television on the local channels.

For whatever reason, more often than not, these shows revolve around religion. The format is quite simple. Some guy gives a lecture, occasionally alluding to a Bible passage. Once he’s had his sales pitch say, they take some phone calls. After the callers shower the host with praise, the audience is treated to veiled pleas for money. So veiled, in fact, that one show offers a telephone number for the viewers to call “to plant a seed.” If one was half in the bag, they would assume they are watching a show about botany and not God.

I’m sure if you ask, they’ll even let you plant two seeds.

As ridiculous as the premise, I can’t help but watch. Boredom plays a part. There is also the strong desire to know how it ends (ideally with the Apocalypse. Think of the ratings!).

Sitting directly in front of a camera was a woman with too much intent on her face, too focused on the caller. She hung onto every word the caller spoke.

By her side was Save By The Bell’s very own Principle Belding.

Maybe not the Principle Belding, but perhaps a very good impersonator. Anytime you can tap into the vast wealth and talent of the Save By the Bell franchise, you know you have a high quality program on your hands. If they could find away to get Zach or even A.C. Slater to make an appearance, they would have all the gardeners and seeds planted they could ever ask for.

I sat there and watched the Principle Belding look-a-like sit uncomfortably in a chair, more interested in finding new angles to cross his legs than what the caller had to say. On the line was a woman named Bambi – whose mother met her unfortunate demise in a drive-by hunting accident - telling a heart breaking story of overcoming illness alongside her husband, who overcame a totally different illness, only to come back to health to try to sell her house, which may or may not have been ill at the time. She didn’t say.

The sale fell through and she was left devastated…until a new buyer came along and purchased the home above the asking price! Hallelujah!

An absolute miracle!

It even caused Principle Belding to pause slightly before shifting his cup two inches to the left.

The phone call led to the startling conclusion that God is a major player in the real estate market. It’s right there in the Bible. In Genesis. In Exodus. In Ecclesiastes.

It was clear as day in the Book of Job, the Book of Tim, Dick, and Harry, and most if not all of the New Testament. No word yet if this is a buyer’s or seller’s market. However, according to the seed planters, this is certainly a deity’s market, one ruled from the heavens.

And no matter how absurd or over the top things got, I was fixated on the television. When I changed the channel, it was only to find something a bit more amateurish. I soon discovered that if the people aren’t trying to sell you God, then they are trying to sell you Michael Jordan in all of his bobbly head goodness.

In college, I developed an unhealthy obsession with the Golden Sports Collectible program, starring a man who could only pronounce opportunity by replacing the ‘t’ with an ‘l’…oppurtunily.

The more amped up he got, the more pronounced the mispronunciations got. Mention a Jeff Gordon rookie card – presumably taken outside a DMV in Charlotte for his Sweet 16 party when he was just a freckled-faced road rager – and the Golden Sports guy would go on a rampage, dropping Ts and adding Is and alienating grammar fans everywhere.

“We have a great lot of some of the greatest drivers in..the…history…of Nascar. Dale Earnhardt, Tony Stewart right here, Chuck the U-haul guy and, yes, even Jeff Gordon. Hurry quickly YOU CAN’T MISS THIS GREAT OPPURTUNILY!”

I never once considered buying anything. My God, what would I do with twenty boxes of Donruss tennis cards? I still got a couple packs of Fleer cards I haven’t gotten around to opening yet. I was tempted to obtain the complete set of the greatest servers in tennis history in the famed “Serving up Balls” special edition collector’s set, which was consequently banned in 6 states after their release. As interesting as having a complete set of “Serving up Balls” cards sounded though, I’m just not sure what I would do with them (Editor’s note: That’s what she said. Hey-ho!).

The Golden Sports Collectible Show didn’t just sell cards. Oh, no. This was a very professional operation here. They weren’t awarded the 3:00 AM timeslot because of their baseball cards alone. They also had game-worn jerseys, autographed balls and photographs, toys, special editions, limited editions, and ultra editions.

None of which interested me.

It was the sales pitch that was more amusing than what was actually up for sale. Part of my unconsumerism is due to my apprehension about spending (ONLY) $467.99 on a Topps Keith Hernandez defect card. In this rare misprint, Keith Hernandez is looking into the camera sans mustache. It was a one-of-a-kind card, but not one for me. I prefer “The Rejuvenator!” to have a full head of ungrayed hair, thank you very much.

Despite having my wallet safely tucked away, watching the Golden Sports Collectible show was something to do as was watching God being pitched in an infomercial.

But as Principle Belding preaches about God and His role in home equity loans, a part of me can’t help but think what else it out there. There has to be something to do. Shouldn’t I be a productive member of society? I could at least plant a seed.

Okay, maybe not be that productive. But there is certainly more to life than what is on the glowing television screen. I reach for the remote to turn off the TV, when I notice a teaser about an upcoming selection of Pavel Bure autographed statuettes for only $99 a piece.

$99.00!!!!

I put the remote down and eased back in my chair because this was an opportunily too good to pass up.

Olympic Sized Dreams

As each day passes by, I can’t help but feel my Olympic window of opportunity closing. It seems like only yesterday that I was a spry kid, running around a park. Track and field athlete? There was potential.

I can remember diving in the swimming pool and people yelling, “Hey, look at that boy dive in the pool!” Then, as I entered the water with the minimal amount of splash that a 60 pound kid could create, the crowd would go wild.

An aspiring Olympic diver? The potential was there.

When it came to the monkey bars, the other kids would look upon my quick hand work in awe as I nimbly moved from bar to bar, from end to end. They used to call me “Mr. 9.4,” with a .6 deduction usually coming as I attempted to kick a kid in the head as he walked under the monkey bars during my routine. You don’t ever do that.

Bastards.

But now, as Sundays make way for Mondays, I am one step closer to the end of my athletic career. A career that hasn’t even begun…yet.

There is so much waiting to be unveiled on the Olympic stage. But in order to prove that I am, in fact, a world-class athlete, I must act before my window closes shut and I’m stuck on the inside, looking out at the athletes that I wish to become.

So today I announce my intentions of becoming an Olympic athlete. In order to begin my journey, I must choose which road to take. In this case, which sport to participate in.

Since I am human and consist of mostly water, swimming would seem like a natural fit. After reviewing the rules and regulations established by the responsible governing body, I came to a startling conclusion – water wings are strictly forbidden. It seems unreasonable to force me to swim in a dangerously deep swimming pool without taking the necessary safety precautions – mainly, strapping on a pair of flotation devices around my biceps.

I have always been a firm believer of not running with scissors. I would come off as a big hypocrite if I were to start running around with a sword in the fencing competition. Knowing my luck, I’ll be the first fencer to ever take out my opponent’s eye. Instead of being remembered for my gold medal accomplishments, people will look back and reminisce about “the pirate maker,” the reason that beloved Swedish swordsman Sven Alfred Thofelt has to walk around with an eye patch as his grandkids quietly wonder, “Why did the Pirate Maker do that to Pappy?”

Any type of marathon – either running or bicycling -  is out for fear I would get bored before the race is over. Worse yet, I could take a wrong turn and end up in some back alleyway, running alongside toothless hookers named Eduardo and Gumbyella.

Beach volleyball was a sport that caught my eye. Running around on sand intrigued me; but the skimpy bikinis scared me. I know my limitations and I don’t think I could pull off wearing the tight bottoms and revealing tops. I would probably be fined an undisclosed sum for “muffin toppage.”

Plus I want to show the world my athletic gifts; not be bombarded with questions from Finnish reporters asking “is that an inny or an outy?” The last thing I need is some Helsinki native getting all up in my business.

So my struggle to find a sport continued. I have only a few criteria. One, I must be able to win the event. After all, that is the point, is it not? It should also make for an excellent story that all the media outlets will cover. This may go without saying, but it should have a conservative attire.

After reviewing my options, I have decided to pursue my career as an Olympic badminton player.

After watching the event, two dudes basically flip a little birdie back and forth until someone swings and misses. It’s not like tennis with 100mph serves that can dislodge your appendix with a precision strike. These are basic floaters that I see when screwing around in the backyard.

I think I can do this.

Nah; I can do this!

Badminton is an event where the Chinese are heavily favored. Indonesia and South Korea are also medal favorites. So imagine the world’s surprise as this little known American badminton player takes the stage to defy the odds and overcome many obstacles as he brings home the gold. It’s a story that would share the headlines with Michael Phelps, the “Redeem Team,” and underage Chinese gymnasts.

More importantly, the typical badminton uniform consists of shorts and tee-shirts. The very clothes that I wear daily during the summer. It seems like this was meant to be.

Now that I have picked my sport, I must begin my training, find a sponsor, name a head coach, buy a badminton racket, take a nap, read up on the rules, have my ankles taped, scout the competition, enter a couple of warm-up events, try out other players in case I want to enter the doubles competition, look into nutritional supplements, probably need a backup badminton racket too, buy special badminton cleats, see if I look better in a headband or a bandanna, and many more things that I’m not yet aware of. After doing all of the previous things, I must find time to qualify for the London games or else everything went for not.

I will probably need to get a water bottle too or does the Olympic host provide complimentary ones? I should look into that as well.

Luckily, the summer games are held every four years. So I have plenty of time to get ready.

I need to take my time.

This isn’t something you want to rush.