Cerebral Flotsam And Jetsam - My Mental Maelstrom

09
May
2008
23:16

I Feel Somehow Special

I got a random email from my band’s website telling me that I might be interested to know about an Ebay auction. This auction happens to be for a cassette of a band I was in in the ’80s. For some reason that felt pretty cool.
On another random tangent, in the past two days I had a total of 4 projects premiere that I was involved in. One was a 20 minute Sci-Fi piece that turned out really cool, one was a three camera studio shoot of a scene from “North By Northwest”, one was a small role in a short about an evil garden gnome, and one was a fake trailer for “B21”, a parody of the movie “21” with Kevin Spacey as the teacher who get MIT students together to go to Vegas and count cards and make lots of money. In our, I played the Kevin Spacey teaching Austin Community College students to “count balls” at bingo parlors. It turned out pretty damn funny. Even the opening cracked me up: “From the film makers who watched the trailer for the movie ’21’…”

22
Apr
2008
21:32

Cary Grant, George Clooney and Milkshakes

Been incredibly busy on the acting front. Not that I’ve ever been that good about blog updating but I like to pretend I have an excuse. In the past two days I played Michael Clayton (George Clooney played him in the film) for a student directing class and also did a scene from North By Northwest where I played Cary Grant’s role. This was for a college production class where we performed in studio with a three camera setup. We rehearsed it many times so the camera people could get their shots and the control room could get their switching between shots choreography down. It was quite a lot of fun.
I’d seen “North By Northwest” but it was some time ago. The scene we did was the scene in the train car where Cary Grant first meets Eva Marie Saint. It really struck me how incredibly saucy this scene was for its time. A sexually aggressive woman industrial designer. Kudos to Ernest Lehman!
As a side tangent, Larry and I have both been trying to be healthier in our eating habits. In an effort to remain healthy yet indulge our sweet tooth, Larry concocted a brilliant treat. We had already been quite the fans of sugar-free chocolate Jell-o pudding. Now it is important to note that that pre-made stuff isn’t nearly as good as the powder that you add milk to and make yourself. Trust us. So Larry had the idea of mixing the pudding mix with some milk and ice and making a milkshake. from there we also added some peanut butter and for nutritional value added a scoop of “Muscle Milk” supplement. This has now become one of our absolute favorite treats. Totally sugar-free, only as much fat as the milk you use and can be a great dessert or a meal replacement if you add the Muscle Milk. Chocolate-peanut butter icy shakes. You’ll thank us.

07
Apr
2008
17:46

Six Word Memoir

Thanks to Oslowe, I have been tagged in that virulent, vampiric, spreading like the undead way known as the Internet Meme (I actually don’t mind, it was just a fun comparison).

There are Rules for the Interwebs.
The Six-Words Meme was originally started by Smith Magazine.
Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the recountre by asking our readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (“Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”) and poignant (“I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (“Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”) and hilarious (“I like big butts, can’t lie”).
Here are the rules:
1) Write your own six word memoir.
2) Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4) Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5) Don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.
6) Have fun.
I do not make these rules.

Heath’s six word memoir:
Master of dreams, seeker of actions
Sorry, victims!
Da Grr
Andy
Vicki
Delle
Jupe

07
Apr
2008
15:18

More news on Zombabies

With a super-tight selection of only six short films being allowed to screen, each one representing a different catagory, and dozens of films submitted, Zombabies was selected as the only narrative piece to screen and was given the Best Narrative at the upcoming Fearless Film Festival in Fort Worth, as a part of the 18th Annual Main Street Arts Festival.

I may be going to the fest to be part of the Zombabies posse and participate in some Q & A sessions (if the director wants). Working out the details with the Director. I, admittedly, get a huge geeky thrill out of the prospect of appearing at a fest as an actor affiliated with a movie and doing Q & A’s and such.

24
Mar
2008
23:20

“Zombabies” has a little buzz going on!

I was in a short film called “Zombabies” a while back and it’s getting some fun buzz going on. For example, a great review at Dread Central. Apparently it’s also been well received at several horror festivals. One group of my friends was at one of these festivals and was quite surprised when suddenly there I was on the big screen. There has been some talk of me possibly appearing in some of the future episodes.
Pretty cool stuff!

16
Mar
2008
13:11

Coolest Desktop wallpaper site ever

www.vladstudio.com
You can download “low quality” versions of all the wallpapers for free or you pay a membership for “high quality” versions. I say “low quality” in quotes because even the free versions look awesome to me. I’m so impressed that I think I’ll spring for a lifetime membership to support them. Right now they’re running an Easter special of $19.99 for life.

24
Feb
2008
2:28

Phrase Express

I was using a text replacement program called “Texter” and a program called “Ditto” that let me paste from a list of things I’d copied recently instead of just pasting the last thing copied. I had some problems with Texter causing issues so I ditched it. Today I found “Phrase Express” which replaces Texter and Ditto and does a whole hell of a lot more! You can use it to easily insert text, auto-correct, launch programs and web pages, paste from a list of recently copied things, execute macros and a whole lot more.
For example, every time I send out a letter to submit for cast or crew, instead of manually typing the same thing every time I can now just type “cast@” or “crew@” and it inserts my entire cover letter. Or I can type “sig@” to insert my signature. The hotkeys or keywords are completely configurable by you. I put the “@” symbol on my keywords just so I don’t accidentally cause an insert without meaning to. If I wanted to I could also make a hotkey if I wanted to such as ctrl-alt-S for my signature, or windowskey+s, or any combination of ctrl-alt-shift-windows+any key.
Check out the website for a much better explanation of all the features. I’m totally digging it so far.