Cerebral Flotsam And Jetsam - My Mental Maelstrom

13
Oct
2006
8:30

No! Not The Darkness!

Apparently “The Darkness” is no more. Singer Justin Hawkins went into rehab for a serious cocaine/alcohol problem, and when he emerged, he decided he could not live the rock and roll lifestyle any more and quit the band. After quitting, the record label promptly dropped the band (not surprising since Justin was the key member in my opinion). I am bummed. I think they were one of the best bands to come along in a long time. Many people thought they were a joke, but if you could get past the novelty you’d find some great song writing, catchy riffs, infectious melodies, crunchy guitars turned up to 11 and just all around great music that would rock your face off. Sure it was all done with tongue planted firmly in cheek, and maybe this was they’re downfall, but that’s one of the things I loved. It was entertaining as well as being great music.
Of course this isn’t really surprising to me as I think the music industry has become a very sad, manufactured, plastic beast where mostly only formulaic music for the lowest common denominator finds support. The Darkness’ second album, “One Way Ticket to Hell…And Back” did not have impressive sales, which is a shame since I think it’s as good, and possibly better than their first album “Permission to Land.” Sadly it seems that success or failure these days has little to do with talent or quality. The Darkness’ two albums will forever remain amongst my favorites.

13
Oct
2006
8:14

Meat Calculator

Larry and I were at the deli counter at the grocery store procuring some lunch meat. We’d ordered up a half pound of Primo Taglio turkey breast when one of the other deli workers came over and informed us that if we bought a pound of Primo Taglio we would get a free calculator in our choice of red, green or purple. We were buying another half pound of ham anyway, so we did indeed get our free calculator. Not only was it a calculator, but it was a clip on calculator! The top was a spring loaded clip like those carabiner keychains! Wow! I could take my meat calculator everywhere!
This exchange pretty much had us puzzled for the rest of the day. Somewhere, someone had had to come up with this bizarre promotion.
“Hey, I’ve got it! Let’s give away calculators if people buy a pound our meat!”
I mean really, who doesn’t associate meat and calculators? It’s a classic duo, like Spaghetti and Ice Cream! We started theorizing how this might have come about. Perhaps some company had somehow ended up with a surplus of clip on calculators, and one day, the manager of this company had lunch with his pal, the manager of Primo Taglio.
“Damn, what the hell am I gonna do with 10,000 clip on calculators!”
“Don’t ask me, I just sell meat.”
“Say! You could have a promotion! I’ll sell you all these calculators, dirt cheap, and you can give ’em away if people buy a pound of meat!”
“Brilliant!”
And here I am with a pound of lunch meat and a bitchin’ purple clip on calculator.

29
Sep
2006
17:27

Destination Unknown

I am writing this from a comfy hospital-type bed in a medical research facility where I am spending the second of 5 weekends as a human guinea pig. The first weekend wasn’t all that bad really. Lots of sleeping (insane amounts in fact), playing on the laptop (with wi-fi internet), etc. interspersed with getting poked by needles, which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought. While I don’t know that I would call this “easy” money, it’s certainly easier than I was expecting, especially since Larry (friend and roommate to Jess and I) is in the adjacent bed to me so it’s kind of like two good buddies hanging out in a cushy medical facility for the weekend. Most importantly it’s pretty big bucks. This week we bought Nintendo DS Lite portable hand held video game systems for me, Larry and Jess. You can actually play games together using wireless connectivity between units. That should make this weekend even more interesting.

Continue reading…

29
Aug
2006
16:13

Who wants my autograph?

Some of you might remember when I was an extra on the upcoming film about Truman Capote titled “Infamous”. In the new trailer for the movie, there are two short clips of the scene I was in. In one of them I’m fairly positive that youc an actually see me in the background. Take a look:

I’m almost positive that’s me. Such a glamorous life I lead.

28
Aug
2006
1:30

The many faces of Heath

I’ve been working on my self-marketing in preparation to try and get an agent and some real acting work. I decided to make up some kind of post cards or something to send as thank you notes or whatever and came up with this collage that I’m going to put on the left hand side. I thought it was pretty cool.

Next update: my grueling week of work as an extra. Oy. Quite possibly the some of the hardest days of work of my life. stay tuned.

18
Jul
2006
1:16

Adventures in Showbiz: Mystery Edition

After my last tale of boredom and career frustration as an extra, I immediately got four days (so far anyway, possibly more) as an extra on the Robert Rodriguez portion of “Grind House”. Sadly, I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement so I can’t actually tell you anything about it other than this has reminded me in some ways why I do this. It has been, for the most part, a very fun experience, though still tinged with the ever present frustration of being only only peripherally near the things I want to be doing (acting and crew work). At least this experience has been slightly more satisfying to the hungry beast inside me that craves the fruition of my dreams.
I think the most frustrating thing as someone looking for work as a Production Assistant (with my professional sights set on rising up to Assistant Directing as the next step) is that it doesn’t seem to matter what you’ve done as much as it just seems you have to “know someone” to get onto the big sets. I already have some Directing and Assistant Directing experience, but not enough to get those jobs professionally.
I really hope to make a career in Austin, as I love it here, and really do not want to live in L.A. I thought I’d use the recent layoff from my day job to channel all my efforts into pursuing acting, crew work, and music. Unfortunately, since these aren’t things you can make a living at overnight, I just might have to sell my body as a medical research volunteer for a while too…
I love Austin. Hopefully Austin will show me some love back! It’s time for my big break, Austin! Ya, hear me?

12
Jul
2006
11:43

Adventures as an Extra: “The Hitcher”

Last week I got the call to be an extra on “The Hitcher“. They wanted me to be a paramedic. Being the considerate guy I am I told them that I was pretty sure they had my out of date headshot where I was 60 pounds heavier and since I recently shaved my head for a role I wanted to send them a current snapshot to make sure they still wanted me. I emailed the snapshot and got the call back that they did still want to use me, but I would instead be a prisoner. Fitting, since I called this my “Prison Break” hair style, but kind of a bummer since I think the paramedic ended up getting used a lot more and got some good camera time. I’m not sure why they changed me since the paramedic didn’t look all that drastically different from me.
The location was down in San Marcos, about a 45 minute drive away, so I got up at 5:00 a.m. to be on set by 6:00 a.m. I was told that I’d be a “new prisoner” being brought in after having just been arrested so I should bring 3 changes of clothes for wardrobe to pick from. The location was the Hays County Law enforcement center. It was interesting filming there since they obviously couldn’t shut the place down, and periodically everything had to stop while an inmate was brought in or taken out. I parked my car and hauled all my stuff across to the catering tent they had set up outside where we’d be hanging out. I signed in and got some good food for breakfast from the table. After a few minutes I was taken to wardrobe. I told them I was a “New Prisoner”, but instead of keeping me in some of my clothes, they put me in the black and white striped prisoner clothes. Hair and make up looked me over and gave their approval, and I was off to the tent to wait. And wait. And wait.

Continue reading…

29
Jun
2006
9:59

Gustavo’s Theme

I thought I’d post this little recording here in case anyone was interested.
I was finishing up a comedic short film that me and a friend had made when I decided to add some music underneath one scene at the last minute. I fired up the DAW and threw down two pieces of music really quickly for the scene. This was during the course of a marathon editing session in order to get this piece out quickly, so I didn’t have a lot of time to be my obsessive perfectionist self.
The playing is sloppy as **** , there was no effects or other post processing done to it at all. Just hit record and went. I pieced it together over many, many, many takes.
So as I said, it’s sloppy, unprocessed and unpolished, but without further disclaimer, Gustavo’s theme
As a bonus, here is the other piece of score I composed for the film.

29
Jun
2006
8:32

Lex Luthor

For our “Movie Musketeers” segment filming last night, we were interviewing viewers coming out of “Superman Returns”, so Larry once again got some more mileage from his Superman costume, Hillary was Supergirl and I was Lex Luthor. Hopefully I can get my hands on some of the many pictures that were taken of the three of us together.

24
Jun
2006
11:02

Heathfucious say:

The burrito of opportunity is bigger than your face.
This has nothing to do with anything, but is just a bit of wisdom that I spouted the other day and I thought I would relate it to you completely free of context.

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