All right, finally getting around to posting this on my own blog since it went up yesterday. The latest episode of Mr. Deity is up, and it features yours truly. Check it out:
As the head of R&D for the entire universe, I think you can understand why I’ve been too busy to blog much.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed it, and look forward to more coming soon. We’re filming another one later this week!
Well, the latest episode of Mr. Deity is out, and it’s a doozy. One of my absolute favorite yet. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I was there, on-set, when it was filmed, operated the cameras, worked as script supervisor, and provided real-time production feedback. I’ll totally skip over the facts that the cameras were completely pre-configured and all I had to do was start and stop them, the cast was so spot-on that dialog reminders were virtually never needed, and my real-time production feedback mostly consisted of laughing at funny things during rehearsal that they had been considering taking out, or reminding them later of hilarious things they improvised earlier that they should use again. Crap, I wrote that out loud, didn’t I?
Anyway, whatever the case, enjoy. And stay tuned for some special news under the video…
Pretty damn good, right? Now in case you were wondering how I got so lucky as to be on the set for this production, it was because I had to have a little meeting with Mr. D himself to discuss my upcoming role in a future episode. That’s right, yours truly will be starring in an episode of Mr. Deity later this year! Who will I be playing? Well, that’s going to have to remain a secret for now, as it’s just too delicious to spoil. Only hint I can give is that I’m going to have to revise a philosophy of mine from my most popular blog post.
Stay tuned for more details…
EDIT: In case anyone ever checks in and asks, the role I eventually ended up playing is NOT the one originally planned. It’s not my place to give away future plot points, which is why I’m not going to specify anything right now, but while it would have been a fun and unusual role to play, I’m much more at home as Timmy, and he provides me with a lot more opportunities.
My five-year-old daughter goes to a preschool/daycare that wasn’t, when we signed up for it, outwardly religious. We were careful to ensure a place that wouldn’t impart any specific religious biases on her so we can do our best to give her a well-rounded view of religion.
Without our choice, though, she was eventually transferred to a new chapter of the organization that was located on the grounds of a Lutheran church. And since then she’s been coming home with lots of interesting new “knowledge.” She won’t be there much longer.
Despite the encroachment on my daughter’s innocence, there is always humor to find in these circumstances, and this one’s great. Yesterday I picked her up and noticed some foam art pieces the kids had made in class of what is presumably God’s hands holding the earth. One child, however, apparently didn’t quite get the concept of how those hands are supposed to be positioned…
Those of us who have been permanently blinded by the Goatse phenomenon should find this reference all too familiar.
Don’t you love it when religion inadvertently imitates disgusting Internet porn fetishes?
I was bored this evening (how unusual…) and decided to look up an old friend of mine, Samm Levine. I had the good fortune of working on three episodes of one of the greatest television series of all time, Freaks and Geeks. Samm played Neal which is a role I had actually read for initially, but can wholeheartedly agree received much better casting with Samm. Samm (who had to add the extra M since SAG already had a Sam Levine, much like Michael J Fox who has no middle name) is, without question, one of the funniest people I’ve ever worked with, and a genuinely nice guy. I worked directly with him on the show and have run into him quite a few times since, and he’s always great to talk to and endlessly entertaining. He’s heavily involved in comedy, and is even the youngest member of the New York Friars Club. He is also quite short which he has managed to make extremely useful.
So in my searching, I came across the following short film (and the pun is very much intended). It stars Samm as well as Seth MacFarlane (yes, of Family Guy fame), as well as several other talented actors. I thought it was extremely funny, and I had to share it with you. You, of course, being my imaginary loyal audience. That’s right, you know who you are, or at least would if a figment of my imagination could have cognitive thought. So enjoy:
Talk about a rap for the rest of us. I could get behind rap if more rappers told it like this…
I’ve checked out some of this guy’s (Jon Lajoie) other music videos and they’re just as clever. If you’re familiar with the now-infamous 2 Girls 1 Cup video (thankfully my familiarity is only by description), you’ll especially enjoy his musical tribute. Check out his Funny or Die page for more videos.
This guy is ridiculously white, dorky, and awkward, and that’s what makes him all the more brilliant. His raps are extremely clever, and you’d be best off listening to this one two to three times to truly understand most of what he says. I was blown away by his entire performance.
Check out a few more of his amazing videos after the break…
Courtesy of Bobiland
I just read an article on Guardian Unlimited on how easily the author, as well as another more recent “software developer,” was able to win a “prestigious” award for his software… software which doesn’t actually exist.
I recommend you follow the link for the full details, but he merely submitted information about his software, DBXV, to the site, claiming an absurd amount of sales, they asked him to verify his statement, he essentially verified it by writing back the equivalent of “yep, it’s true,” and paid the cash for the plaque he was awarded. There was a big awards dinner which he declined to attend, and he was listed as a Million Dollar Guy. All with imaginary software.
The more recent case was someone else who won no less than 16 awards for a utility that consisted of nothing more than a TXT file renamed with a .exe extension. That’s it. It didn’t do a damn thing. But all the sites cared about was the publicity, and the hope that a link would be placed on their site to help generate ad revenue. The author of the page also noted that as with restaurant awards, they hope to get the winner to pay to advertise with the award-giver, not to mention get a few bucks out of them for a table at the award ceremony.
This got me thinking about some of my past experiences. Several of my old web sites won numerous awards through no effort of my own. It was almost every other week I was getting contacted regarding a new award my site had won. Wow, did I think my site must have been good in those days. I look back now and laugh at how naive I was, especially when I look at my poor design work. All those rewards always REQUIRED that I post the award link on my site. I never thought anything of it. It all seems so obvious now, though.
But it goes further. Back in 1999 I was nominated for a Young Artist Award for my guest role in an episode of Boy Meets World. At the time even I knew that seemed odd, but I was excited nonetheless. I had been nominated for an award; how cool is that? I had to rent a tux, and I had to pay for seats at the award ceremony. The voting was actually handled by, of all people, the nominees, themselves, as well as their agents. Huh? And no effort was made to differentiate who we were or what we were nominated for. Most of the work was guest roles or other parts that were hard to recognize, and no episode or even character names were given. Who the heck knew what I did in a single random episode of Boy Meets World? How could I possibly win? I did my best to figure out who the other nominees were and vote based on the ones I could honestly attest to, but for the most part I had to leave them blank. I doubt most voters made that much effort.
Anyway, the night of the award ceremony came, it was a semi-big to-do, my category was called, the nominees were listed, I pretended to think I had a shot, and guess what happened? I won! Yup, that’s right, I was voted the best male guest lead in a television sit-com for 1999… right alongside the other four nominees. A five-way tie. Who would have thought that in an awards ceremony voted on by ourselves and our agents that we would all tie? It was pathetic, it was a waste of time, and it never did a damn thing for me. But looking back, they sure made a mint off of all those tickets to the ceremony, now didn’t they?
I hate awards shows, and now I’m realizing more and more what a pointless waste they are, entirely designed for the benefit of the promoters of the awards. What a sad waste of all of our time.
btw, if you liked this post, as well as all of the other fine work on my site, please feel free to submit me to any of the fine web site awards sites on the ‘net. I’d be happy to display their worthless beautiful logos across the bottom of my page.