A note about Phil Tucker's new epic fantasy series, "Chronicles of the Black Gate"

Facebook posts and Twitter blurbs weren't doing it for me, and, not that anyone will read this or do more than scan the title and click "Like"*, I felt as if I must expound on my thoughts and feelings towards Phil Tucker's new high/epic fantasy series, Chronicles of the Black Gate.

I'm not a high/epic fantasy guy. Never got into it. Got through the first two Ice & Fire books and then tuned out.** Made it to the Tom Bombadil chapter in Fellowship and actually told the book to fuck itself. The closest thing to high/epic fantasy I dig is King's Dark Tower books, and an argument could be made that those aren't really high/epic fantasy at all. So, when Phil, one of my oldest and dearest friends, reached out to me about reading The Path of Flames, the first book in his new epic fantasy series to get my perspective (that of someone who is not a fan of the genre) I was pensive. I love Phil's writing and the worlds he creates and have since we were in high school, where he introduced me to role playing (White Wolf's Mage the Ascension and Vampire the Masquerade mostly), but I was worried I'd get bored with the subject material and it would turn into a chore. 

It did not. 

It fucking did not. 

I found each of the six main character's intertwined stories engrossing and compelling, and, although I was waiting for a dull moment to crop up, spurring me to skip to the next paragraph***, that moment never came. When I reached the end of the first book, I was sated yet still ravenous; both to experience the next step in each of the protagonists' journeys and to discover more about this startlingly original world that Phil had created, its rules, its history, etc. But, more than that, as always with my favorite writings of his, I didn't just want the next book, I wanted to role play in the world, have Phil DM and plot some horribly twisted and delightfully macabre demise for me.

But, taking a step back, what did it mean if I, someone who doesn't know anything about the genre, liked it? It could be a fluke. I could be a fluke. One might also think that I'm biased towards everything Phil would write, as his friend, but, anyone overhearing my frank and, yeah, let's say it, brutally scathing review of the first two books in his recent YA vampire series would have to rethink that opinion. I'm acidically critical of Phil's work because I know what he's capable of. Same with Trent Reznor, same with all of my favorite artists.

So: I liked it. I gave Phil my notes and wished him well. As it turns out, I was right; it wasn't just his closest friends who'd liked The Path of Flames, it was other authors and fans of the genre; positive reviews and record breaking sales had confirmed what I had suspected: this was a truly excellent and potentially far reaching and massively appealing work. After reading an almost final draft of the second book, The Black Shriving, just released on Amazon today, I was completely sold. I'm in for the long haul. Might his Chronicles of the Black Gate make me into an epic fantasy fan? Probably not.**** But if this is the only high/epic fantasy I ever read, I'm comfortable with that.

* Or another one of those goddamn fucking emoticons that I WILL NEVER USE FACEBOOK SO EAT A SMILING DICK.

** And I've never seen an episode of GoT.

*** Not because of Phil's writing, but because my attention span has been as deliquesced by the uprising of social media as the next bent-necked, fungus-brained zombie.

**** Fuck Tom Bombadil. Forever.

Tuesday Was Awful

Yesterday, for the first time in a very long time, I was afraid. I was legitimately terrified. I was terrified of losing my one, functioning eye, thus rendering me completely blind.

Since my 9th grade year or so, I only had the one functioning eye, and it doesn't function that well, I'd say between 35 and 45 percent. This is because of a large quantity of scar tissue on my retina left over from the half dozen plus eye surgeries I had over the course of 1995 and 1996. These half dozen plus surgeries were to reattach both my retinas which had become detached while I was on my high school football team*. As a result, my night vision is almost non-existent, I have no depth perception whatsoever, what is well-lit for you is dim for me, and what is dim for you is basically pitch black for me. Combine the sports angle with the eyesight situation and you'll begin to understand why sports bars are, literally, hell for me.

And, I've had a few folks try to "see what it's like" by merely closing one eye. That doesn't work. You'd have to close one eye, retard the rate at which your pupil dilates and then disrupt and distort your vision with a constantly-shifting blob of color (the scar tissue) filling up most of your upper left quadrant and patches of your other three quadrants of vision.

Just saying.

So, why was I actively concerned about losing my remaining, shitty eyesight?

You ever get a eyelash in your eye?

You ever rub your eye?

Well, when angles and pressure and Satan's prankishness are all juuust right, you can rub an eyelash RIGHT INTO YOUR EYE. The white part of your eye is called the sclera and I got an eyelash embedded in my sclera. No, it didn't hurt, but the idea of something penetrating the delicate membrane of my eye...ugh, shudder. Incidentally, this is why you should have deep eye contact with someone special every day, it strengthens the relationship and they can see if you have any foreign bodies puncturing your eyeballs.

Anyway, how does one remove an eyelash which has been lodged in one's sclera? It's pretty motherfucking, goddamn, horrifically terrible friends; the eye doctor, hopefully with the rock solid hands of Roland Deschain of Gilead, puts numbing drops in your eye and then uses an instrument to remove it. A tweezers if you're lucky, a scalpel and a tweezers if you're not. The worst part for anyone else is having to keep your eye open and motionless while a series of metal instruments draw near, touch and then sort of distort your vision (that's the instrument piercing the surface of your eye and slightly altering its shape). For me, throw in the fact that, if something goes wrong, I could lose my remaining sight. 

So while I'm trying to sit as still as possible, hold my eye open despite EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING AND THE SCREAMING COMING FROM MY MIND TO GET AWAY FROM THE BLADE ABOUT TO CUT MY EYE and not sob in terror (both because that would shake my body and because I am an ugly, ugly crier) some things flashed through my head. 

What were the last things I remember seeing? 

The last movie was Deadpool, and, while not a fantastic film, I felt it could be a fitting last one for me. 

The last non-Braille book was "Vampire L.A." by Phil Tucker (seriously, Phil: 100% enjoying it now that I'm 3/4 into it).

Last VO gig was AirWick.

The last concert, They Might Be Giants (or, kind of, Mother Feather, if you count the dozens of times I saw them perform "Living/Breathing" last weekend), fine with both of those.

The eyelash, which had broken into two pieces, came out all right and, as of right now, things are okay. I'm taking a course of antibiotic eye drops and I have a follow up on Friday, and another in a week or so after that, but now (and for a while probably), I'm afraid to go to the gym (sweat and/or pool water probably not helpful), keep my eye open (dust!), keep my eye closed (more bastard fucking eyelashes), pet the cat (dander, whatever that is), sneeze (sudden pressure shift), read (bit of a hinderance when that's technically my job), shit (muscle strain), utilize anything with a screen (reduced blinking results in dry eyes results in my eye turning to glass and shattering probably) and so on.

So...that's where I'm at.

* peer pressure, Florida, etc.

Pepsi: The Official Drink Of The NFL...The Fuck Is This Bullshit?

These last few weeks, I've been to a lot of auditions for Pepsi. All of them have been tied to the NFL. Why?
Well, because Pepsi is the official somethingorother for the National Football League.
Yes. Because when one of these massively overpaid and performance-enhancing-drug-soaked meat things tromps off the field, the first thing they crave, the first thing for which they yearn...is an ice cold Not Coke.
They don't want to kill and eat a deer with nothing but their hands and teeth, they don't want to drink beer out of a prostitute, they want corn syrup laced with sugar.

I recently booked a Pepsi radio spot for the upcoming football season*. It's being produced by Mekanism, a company I've worked with before who are all awesome, and the spot is awesome. It's something along the lines of "football is a bunch of grown men in matching outfits chasing a ball around". The next part is something about how (for some odd reason) drinking Pepsi makes doing so exciting.
As funny and irreverent as the marketing is, it's still marketing and has to conform to the client's guidelines/requirements/demands and serve to show all us teeming, sweaty, retarded masses that Pepsi is what we need to get us closer to whatever we consider God, but, at least it's making fun of football and those who slavishly bow to it...on national TV, well played guys. But, this Pepsi radio thing I went out for yesterday?
Ugh.
I sincerely hope that Mekanism isn't responsible for it. It's abysmal**. It actually contains the line "maybe drinking Pepsi will inspire us". Unless that line is delivered in the most inbred, dumbfuck voice one can muster...I can't even finish the sentence.
"Maybe drinking Pepsi will inspire us"? Are you fucking kidding me?
Your company makes billions of dollars a year and the best you could afford is "maybe drinking Pepsi will inspire us"?

All right.
Wait.
Hang on.

I think I just got it as I was pounding out that last line...I get it now.
Pepsi...is happy being Pepsi.
They know they'll never be Coke, they know that no one will ever have both available and choose their corn syrup swill over Coke's...so they're perfectly fine with shitty advertizing like that.
Or, maybe, they were so happy with the witty stuff Mekanism came up with that they're content with just one commercial that doesn't make people want to die because of how stupid it is.
"Guys? Not everything we do completely sucks ass! WOOO!"
Good for them.
Know your place.
If you're Pepsi, then, by gum, be happy with who you are!

Whatever happens, no matter how stupid Pepsi ads get or how blindly people stumble after football players, gibbering and yanking at their sopping crotches, I will always have the moment when I saw the guy from Pepsi drinking Coke at that session.
I will hold that in my heart.
Forever.





* My first time serving as, ostensibly, a VO extra; you can hear me as the announcer on the TV amidst a crowd of fans and buried under a full on announcer guy. But, the money's green so the light is, also, green which means the trap is clean.

** For a soft drink commercial. As anything more, it's actual poison.

Terrence Howard: Eat A Dick

What changes?
What changes in a person that suddenly makes one million dollars not seem like a lot of money?

Remember when you and your friends would sit around and say stupid shit like, "How much money would it take for you to eat poop?"
And you'd say something like, "Not for less than a million dollars!"
Let's be honest; we all know someone who would eat poop for far less that a million dollars.
But, and this whole fuckrant is contingent on whether or not the information contained within these articles is accurate, Terrence Howard wouldn't eat poop for a million dollars.
Nope.
You know what else he wouldn't do for a millions dollars?
Be a part of a franchise that has grossed over a billion dollars.
I understand how, relatively, one million is less than four and a half million.
I do.
It's math.
Four and a half million is three and a half million more than one million.
See?
But a million dollars to be an actor in a film is still good.
It's real good, you guys.

Here's the venomous little heart of this thing for me: actors want to be treated like normal people (for the most part), because, technically, they are normal people, in the biological sense, anyway. They still eat and sleep and poop and fuck, just like all humans*, but there is something that happens to an actor's mind (most actors, not all actors) that changes the value of things...suddenly, getting paid anything for acting in a movie, is no longer the most incredible (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word) occurrence in the world.
Something changes and makes that actor think that, because they are sharing their ability to pretend in front of a camera with the rest of the world, that receiving less than a million dollars is, somehow, unfair or wrong. Not worth their time.

I'm now a full time actor, primarily voice, but I do on screen as well. I have booked jobs where the amount of money I've received for my time seemed ridiculous; thousands of dollars for, in some cases, less than an hour of work, that "work" consisting of talking into a microphone in a quiet, comfortable room in New York City. I've also done much more than that amount of "work" for far less, sometimes for free, even.
Because being a working actor is the best job in the world and because I am so, so insanely grateful that this is where I am right now.
And, when I look at things like Howard turning down the chance to be in a movie, let alone for a million fucking dollars, I get sick.
This isn't what this is supposed to be about.
And I'm not just pointing fingers at Terrence Howard. Robert Downey Jr. was paid fifty million to be in Avengers.
Fifty million.
That's fifty times more than what Terrence Howard turned down not to be in Iron Man 2.
And that makes me sick, too.
What does RDJ (or any eight-digit-paycheck-per-film actor) need fifty million dollars for?
Transportation?
Food?
Even without eating the best food in the world and taking the fastest and most private jets in the world, one can still live well without anywhere near that much money.
And he received that amount for one movie.

I don't really know where I'm going here. I suppose this is an indictment of the entire entertainment industry?
How does one determine the value of an actor's time and skill versus that of a fireman or a teacher?
How is it that one VO job pays $500, another pays $100 and a third pays $10,000?

I am not Terrence Howard. Yes, I really do understand that. I am not a movie star. I also understand that.
But I am a professional actor, and the idea of turning down the work that makes me a professional actor seems utterly senseless to me.
I am still utterly shocked and delighted every time I book a gig and they have an unlimited supply of water for me to drink.
And snacks!
I feel like I've won some sort of prize!
And you're going to pay me to talk into this microphone?!
I've been doing this for ten years now, and I am almost just as stoked about it as I was the very first time I booked a gig and received viable currency for doing something that I love and am good at.
What the fuck else do you need, Terrence? Robert?
What do you need aside from receiving money and adulation for doing something you love and are good at**?

Anyway.
Unfocused spatter of bile concluded.

One last, two part question for Terrence, if I may: if someone had walked up to you with a million dollars when you were growing up in Chicago all those years ago, and told you it was for pretending you were Iron Man's best friend, would you have turned it down then?
What's changed in forty years, you cock?





* And I apologize for excluding those among us without digestive systems, mouths or sexual orgams, I really do.

** Robert, not Terrence. Quite frankly, I'm overjoyed they bumped him off of the Iron Man movies.

Doing My Duty...heh heh heh...

Several months ago, I received a questionnaire for jury duty qualification.
I completely ignored it for two reason: the first, fuck you, no one summons me except for the Lord our God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and, second, because of that episode of The Simpsons when Apu becomes a citizen and then, at the very end, receives a summons for jury duty and then throws it out.
Some time later, I received a more threatening questionnaire, stating that they had sent me one before this and that I had not responded and that, by doing so again, I'm open to jail time and fines and molly flogging, etc.
So, I responded with the following message, jotted on the back of their smug little declaration:

Some time after that I received my actual summons instructing me to call a robot after office hours on a Friday, at which point I found out that I had to appear at 9 am on the following Monday.
You clever, fucking shitbags.
As I was scheduled to record for a NYSE voice over, I was, understandably,. perturbed when every single number listed, even the emergency numbers which were printed in big, red numbers all directed me to offices that would open a half hour before I had to be at the courthouse which, because fuck you, was NOT the courthouse within walking distance from my home, but, rather, the one forty minutes away.
Well played.
You fucks.
Luckily, the producer was super-awesome and, after an e-mail or two, we rescheduled for 6 pm on Tuesday evening.

Anyway, I won't bore you with all the details of what transpired during my two days involved with jury duty*, I'll just touch on some of the things that really blew me away.

First, there was the vast amount of time that was wasted. Now, I am aware that I've never been on the other side of certain events; concerts, jury duty and other occurrences in life that seem to take an inordinate amount of time to those not involved, but I cannot wrap my head around the staggering amount of time it took to actually accomplish anything! I was there from 9 am until 3:45 pm. In that time, there was maybe...sixty solid minutes of something actually happening. The person who was to be tried, was arrested in November of 2011. What the fuck is taking so long?!
But, again, I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes...maybe I need to talk to a lawyer or something.

So, there was the fat and sludgy misuse of time; then, there were the people.
I don't know if it was the people in charge or the potential jurors, but somewhere along the line, either the chicken or the egg got real stupid. We were treated partially like 2nd graders and partially like cows with learning disabilities but, the thing is, everyone was acting like 2nd graders and/or cows with learning disabilities. At no point did I feel like anything other than a cog. A dumb, blunt cog. Who wasn't sure if you wanted my date of birth or today's date or where are my hands, I forgot.
The phrase that kept coming back to me was "a jury of one's peers".
I was too sad to laugh.
This continued into the court room. Here, it makes a little more sense; these laywers don't know who their potential jurors are or if they've veer watched television or seen a movie or read a book, and, therefore, explained everything as slowly and as clearly as they could...it was like...you know what it was like? Back when it looked like I might lose the sight in both my eyes, my parents looked into the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind and I was sent to their summer program, in order to see what the place was like. However, the majority of the other kids there also had development disabilities that had occurred with the loss of their eyesight. Not all of them, but a good number.
As a result, I felt like I was in an asylum at times. It was horrible and terrifying and, after two weeks of the eight week program, I told my parents to get me the fuck out of there, which, thankfully, they did.
Anyway, once the lawyers (well, one was a lawyer who happened to look and sound exactly like George Bluth's surrogate from Arrested Development** and the other was an assistant DA) were done finding out if we had to poo poo or knew what poo poo was, they began to ask the potential jurors THE MOST THINLY VEILED QUESTIONS EVER. Such as "if you saw me with an umbrella and then drop it and run away and then you asked me if this was my umbrella and I said it wasn't and that I had just found it...who's umbrella would it seem to be?"
Forgot to mention, the case centered around a dude who was caught with, not one, not two, but with THREE loaded guns on his person, one of which had the serial number defaced.
Golly golly gosh, I wonder if his story is going to sound something like "I picked up the three guns but then put them down and walked away".
There was a lot more stuff like this which was just silly and I'll spare you the details.
Partly because I think I may be breaking some law or other just typing this here...I think.
But, hey, based on how slow everything works, I would be caught and called on charges until I've been dead for forty years.
So, after watching these people be pandered to, on my second day I was called into the box and given a bunch of questions. In the end, I answered them all truthfully and was let go. Along with everyone else who answered intelligently and with a touch of basic understanding of the events unfolding around them.
It appears that the lawyers wanted the slowest and/or non-thinking people in the group...I guess. Again, I've never been on the other side of these proceedings, and, beyond simple logic, the voir dire process is a mystery to me.

Some random things and then I'll gavel you:

Utter astonishment at the effort and expense put into wasting the time of over a thousand people every day. I am floored.

As it so happened, Bill Zeiser (a year behind me at Fordham, think I met him once at a party thrown by Christina Andrews) ended up sitting about ten feet behind me in the initial jury/cattle room. We were in the same group throughout and thus, hung with each other. Also, as it happened, one that first day, he and I had both worn bright orange shirts. At the end of our first day, we decided to wear navy blue shirts the next day, purple shirts the third day and, finally, if things went on this long, full on black suits the fourth day. Although we only made it two days, we did have a woman comment "you guys must color coordinate or something". Phase one was complete. Now...we take them down from the inside...
Or we would have if we'd been there more than two days.

And, speaking of shirts***, the navy blue shirt I decided to wear that second day was my one and only Cake shirt. It has a picture of a tree and the word "cake" on it. When I was being questioned by the assistant DA, he looked at my shirt and said, "Cake...the band, not the food, right? They're good" I nodded and responded, "They are. The food is also good."
If this weren't fun enough on its own merit...the above exchange is now in the official transcript of those proceedings. Forever.

I'll leave you with that.

Also: Matlock. Perry Mason. Lionel Hutz. The noise from "Law & Order".




* Too late.

** Yeah, could not make eye contact with the guy for fear of laughing like a mad man in his face.

*** TOTALLY NOT A BULLSHIT SEGUE! OH CHRIST I CANNOT WAIT FOR YOU TO CONTINUE READING TO SEE HOW APT THIS SEGUE REALLY IS!!!!!!!

iRant

While I hope this is the first and last fuckrant involving my new iMac, I'm almost certain it won't be.
Because I'm just a bubbling cauldron of Pissy Bitch Stew*.

I arrived home with my massive, so-goddamn-huge-that-it-doesn't-safely-fit-on-my-desk 27" iMac last night after work having stopped to pick it up from the Apple Store on 5th.
I unboxed this monster, marvelled at how spartan/smug their lack of stuff that's actually in said box, and then started clearing space.
I plugged everything in and then began the migration from my PC to my Mac.
Now, this isn't on the Mac, this is on the PC, but, don't worry, I'll aim my piss cannon back in Apple's direction in just a moment.
Realizing that it is about to be kicked to death as soon as I have everything I need off of it, at some point during the file transfer process (I was asleep), my PC (cute, little rascal that it is) decided to do one of those "hey, unless you click this thing RIGHT NOW we're going to restart your computer for some really really important updates that you need because they are important really, no matter what you're doing, is that cool? Too late we already did it!" things.
The fucker.
You'd think that in the year 2013, someone would fucking program a computer to first check if anything else is happening (if a program is running, if something is downloading, if fucking god damn motherfucking data is transferring) before it restarts itself or, if it absolutely MUST MUST MUST NOW OR IT WILL DIE do whatever it has to do that it thinks is SO fucking important, program it to start these interrupted operations back up.
But, no.
"Oh, you got a new Mac, huh? Niiice. What the processor speed? Oh wow, that is, like, 400 times faster than me! Hard drive? Oh, yes, very nice. And how big is the screen? Holy SMOKE that is big! And HD?! Phew! Well, enjoy that, I'm just going to shit in your closet before I go, thanks!"
So, I had to set all that shit up again, losing, oh, eight hours that could have been spent, you know, using my new computer.
But, as we all know, 8 is not as bad as 14.
Man.
What a random statement.
What could that pertain to?
Well...I will tell you.
14 is the number of hours it is going to take to transfer the scraps of music that I have on my old PC (I keep the bulk of it on an external hard drive) to my new one. Both are wired to the same network, so there's nothing in the way there, and, we're talking about, MAYBE 35 GB.
That's ABOUT two and a half GB AN HOUR.
What in the screaming wet FUCK would possibly cause this ti take 14 fucking hours?!
Is it goblins?
Pirates?

So.
There you have it; I'm bitching myself bloody BEFORE THE FUCKING THING IS EVEN SET UP.
When I left the house today, things looked as if they were going to be transferred by the time I arrived home this evening, so I'm expecting to find some cute little message on either the PC or the Mac (although, most likely the PC) letting me know that it forgot what data is and now it's going to restart itself, just to feel like it has accomplished something.
And it has.
It has cemented my decision that it will not be donated or refurbished, but, rather, stuffed with feces and explosives, and then thrown from the roof.
Because that is how I view my PC at this moment: an exploding ball of shit, falling through empty space.





* Which is called "Sklümpëšk" in Iceland.

Beer. At Nine In The Morning

Just received word from my panicked agent that I booked a Bud Light voice over for tomorrow morning...at nine...in the morning...A.M.
It has something to do with March Madness, which, I think, is some sort of fungal rash, typically found around the genitals, specifically the anus region; like Athlete's Foot, but with more hives and burning and stink.
I'M JUST KIDDING!!!
I KNOW ALL ABOUT MARCH MADNESS!!!
It's when basketball fans act even more obnoxious and vicarious than usual.
And I am about to get paid ca$h money to rile them up even further...
This must be what Satan feels like.

Aside from beer, just yesterday I was called back in to do some more recording for Carrabba's, a chain of Italian restaurants that are better than Olive Garden.
10% of the time was spent actually recording while the other 90% was spent eating Goldfish and talking with the engineer, J.D. about how great this industry is and that someone in the industry can never complain to someone not in this industry about the industry or we'll sound like assholes.
Overpaid assholes.
Overpaid assholes who don't do nearly enough for what we are being paid.

On Thursday, both the 14th (Pi Day!!!) and the 21st, I have EVEN MORE SPEAKABOOS!!!!
The last time I was in, I did a villain, finally, although not an evil one, a repentant one...with a goo wand...

And, on Monday, I have another session with Target recording an introduction and breakdown video for their Everyday Collection campaign so they can submit the spots to awards and stuff...so...bacon.

All this and I'm about halfway through recording my second audio book. Thank the bleeding lord Jesus it's only a fraction of the size of Grind Show and that the longest recording session I've had has been just over an hour. I need to fucking soundproof my home...

Along with all this, Chris and I watched that Netflix series, House of Cards which wasn't as bad as one might expect for being an original series on Netflix and the second season of American Horror Story.
Four words: Ian McShane. Holy fuck.

Then there is the wedding.
May I just go on record as saying that Chris has done about 97% of the work?
Thank you.

We're stressed and dying and getting there and it's going to be awesome, but, before it's awesome, it's massive brain and butt fuckery; financially, emotionally and physically.

The podcast is going strong.
But it could go stronger.
You lazy, fucking assholes.
Go here and listen and subscribe and rate and review my shit*.
Then, go here and appreciate all the fucking work I put into the style of my fucking podcast.
Fuck.

I completed Dead Space 3 and didn't think it was as horrendous as everyone else did.
As soon as I have some time, I have, literally, eight games just waiting to be played.
I think I shall start with Metal Gear Rising.

I'm finished.





* Favorably, you fucking dicks.

Like Humans Do

Three days.
For THREE DAYS I have been living among you as a Daylighter.
Waking at 8:00 am, going to sleep before midnight.
Calling my first meal "breakfast" instead of "lunch" or "supper".
And, I have formed a conclusion regarding you who walk in the light: while you may get more done, you are all angry about this fact.
I cannot wait to return to the sweet, silky darkness...

The reason I've been exposing myself to such horrid, quotidian rituals all center around the Acting, to one degree or another. Wednesday and Thursday, it was for two 5-hour rehearsals for tomorrow and Sunday's recording sessions for Electromagnetic Theater, a new podcast/radio play series I'm in and, today, because Carabbas wanted my mouth and the sounds within.
AND I GAVE IT TO THEM.
I've worked with this company before on a Harley-Davidson commercial and...yeah.
Both were commercials.
Right on.
Before the industry shuts down for Christmas and New Years and all that, I have another session with Speakaboos on Thursday which, according to the Executive Content Producer, will be "meaty".
You know I love meat.
You know I love meat!

And now, let's move on to something else.
Specifically four bits of stuff that I have consumed/am in the midst of consuming.

First, after some suggestion from Alan, I have cracked open the first of the Young Bond books, of which there are five. The first one, SilverFin, starts off with Bond's first day at Eton as a 13 year old or something.
I've read about a third and I am utterly unimpressed.
Aside from the fact that this kid will, one day, turn into James Bond and kill some dude with a laser watch, this is pretty boring shit. Also, it appears that SilverFin is some sort of eel man.
I might continue, just to see what the fuck is going on, but I also might not, as Phil's brand new book, the first is his new tetrology, is sitting, hot and steaming, like a blood pie on my windowsill.
That rambled a bit.
I'd much rather read the latest work of fiction from my very good friend then some bullshit about a 13 year old James Bond matching wits with some eel man.

Then, there is American Horror Story, the first season of which Chris and I burned our way through in about four days.
It's like a darker and more in-depth Beetlejuice.
With rape.
And, I'm sorry, but Jesus fucking goddamn CHRIST is Alexandra Breckenridge hotter than lava with a sunburn or WHAT?!*
I love love love that the guys who did Glee did this as well.
Let's see...Zachary Quinto is awesome, the opening credits (visuals by the guy who did the credits for Se7en and music by the former keyboardist from Nine Inch Nails) are amazing nightmare brownie cake and...shit, I don't know, the whole thing is incredible and twisted and I'm gloriously happy that I missed hearing anything about it until now.

But, good TV must, sadly, be opposed by bad TV...and, yes, I'm addressing YOU, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
So, I missed the phenomenon of Buffy when it was on. My first exposure to Buffy was fucking EVERYONE in my high school overquoting the shit out of it and, if they were a girl, ladyjerking over Spike. I encountered Joss Whedon's writing for the first time (I think) in Firefly, which I loved, then Dollhouse and so on and so forth. Jen made an arrangement with me that if I gave Buffy another chance (I'd watched the first season and was thoroughly unimpressed and puzzled at its popularity and success): just watch a select number of episodes from the second season, and she would, in turn, watch Dollhouse, which she had not touched because of here (completely justified) hatred of Eliza Dushku, the lead character.
While Dollhouse seems to be growing on her (although the core premise makes her rather furious and sick, and rightly so), I am NOT having the same reaction to Buffy.
Some of the issues I'm having:

1. Xander - I can't think of any character that has made me want to crawl inside my TV and make killing more than this pud. I say, out loud, "Shut the fuck up, Xander" several times per episode. And, by the way, before anyone comes back with, "He's written that way on purpose! You're supposed to hate him!", may I offer a retort: AN INTENTIONALLY ANNOYING CHARACTER IS STILL FUCKING ANNOYING.

2. You know...I just don't care enough to list reasons. I'll do my best to watch the five or six more episodes I said I would, "ten millions Americas can't be wrong" and al that. I can't explain it. Maybe this is like my thing with Wes Anderson...everyone I know who has seen all the Wes Anderson movies seems to like every one except one. For me, it's Rushmore. Can't stand it, can't watch it, but, I own everything else the guy has done, and, while I like some (Life Aquatic, Royal Tenenbaums) more than others (Darjeetling Limited, Bottle Rocket), the only one I hate is Rushmore.
Perhaps Buffy is my Rushmore.
Or perhaps I'm putting too much effort into talking about this...

I also watched Disaster Movie.
*sigh*
Can I hire someone to warn me when I start thinking about watching certain TV and movies?
And, here's the thing, I knew what I was in for! I saw Not Another Teen Movie! I saw Epic Movie! This is entirely my fault! Half of this shitty piece of lowest-common-denominator shit was the cast looking puzzled/disgusted/confusing/annoyed/unbelieving/bemused/worried/incredulous at something happening. Then shaking their heads like, "Whoa, what was that, that was weird!!!!!" and then doing it again on a different set.
For 90 minutes.
Two things I enjoyed: the Princess was great and the chipmunks were also pretty great.
But that is about four minuets of funny in an hour and a half long movie.
And I have NO ONE to blame but my fucking self.
This isn't Mystery Science Theater! I AM NOT BEING FORCED TO WATCH THESE THINGS!

And, the last crouton on this shit salad: I played through Lollipop Cheerleader. It's....so substanceless... Or, no, more like a hollow turkey dinner...no...hm...okay, the game's creator, Suda 51, became infamous for his random and somewhat bawdy sense of humor with his utterly out there games like God Hand and No More Heroes and Killer 7, but Lollipop Cheerleader...I don't know, it's like there's nothing there...playing it was a chore, the dialogue was trite and, at times, violently sexist for no reason at all....it's like it doesn't even exist...I can't even put it into words...
So, I won't.
If I'd paid more than $20 for it, I might have been more upset, but I didn't so I'm not.

Moving on...
to nothing.







* I'm a man with a penis. Deal with it. DEAL WITH IT NOW.

I Am An Idiot

After too little sleep last nighty and a full day today (booking from 10 to 1, then an audition from 1:30 to 2, then awful, awful work), I have made a very poor life choice.
As I left my booking this morning, I found that Hannah from TransPerfect had sent me a script that needed to be recorded by tomorrow at 6 pm. It's about 6000 words on about 30 pages and is estimated at about three hours of work (word count plus something equals about how long it should take me). The rate would be exactly one tenth of what I had made earlier that morning for the exact same amount of time.
So, I called Hannah, who is totally awesome and sweet and said that, for this amount of job, there's no way I could take what they were offering. She said she totally understood and was able to free up more money for me.
Because I really do love TransPerfect and the folks that work there, as well as the fact that these aren't auditions, these are people asking for me and then paying me, I agreed to do it.
Later on, I read the script.

I am a stupid, stupid idiot.
The script is an eLearning module about Dell's Cloud.
Everything. About. Dell's. Cloud.
The words...they're all words I know, but I've never used half of them and certainly not in the same sentence as each other.
When the fuck am I ever going to say the words "infrastructure" or "virtualization" or "Rationalization/Modernization and Application Migration" (although that last one has a horrid musicality to it)?
Well, I will tonight.
From about midnight until whenever this load of industry jargon fuckwash is finished.
Good thing the ground isn't covered by slush and the pipes aren't knocking in my apartment, causing the kind of background noise that will knock me out of my groove which is going to be incrdibly hard to find with a script this fucky.
Oh, fuck, I'm an idiot.

When (if?) I finish this load of blibber, I might post some, just so you can hear how fucking awesome and professional I am.
Because, no mater HOW much this will kill me (and, friends, it will kill me), in the end, you will think, not only, that I know what in the fuck I'm talking about, but that I'm totally engrossed and entertained by it.

In conclusion.
Fuck.
I'm fucked.

Let's Get Sloughy!

Slough.
Fistula.
Rectourethral.

These were this weeks' buzz words here at the Hospital with Jen. I believe all three can be made sexy if spoken huskily enough, a task I am more than happy to accept.

...fiiistulaaa...

I believe that "slough" is the most disgusting onomatopoetic word there is, although I'd be happy to discuss this.
No?
All right then.

I've had THREE acts of Subway fuckery in THREE days and I'm ready to fill the tunnels with the screams of the children of those that run the MTA. And each time they broke it off in me, I was in a car full of their self-aggrandizing, "cute" ads for how great they are and how smoothly things run because of them.
Oh such rage...such impotent, impotent rage...
How is it that I have NEVER, ONCE had a Subway meltdown?
More often than not, I'm pressed against some unwashed fucktard, covered in sweat and told by some chipper robot that "You're going to be fifteen minutes late just because! Eat a dick and then pay us $100 a month for the privilege and the pleasure, cuntface!"
Hm.
Maybe, all this rage I've been swallowing my whole life is what has made me so tall.
I'm made of rage.
Awesome.

Moving on, the last three days (technically two days, but it was going to be three days) have been thick.
Wednesday at 9:15 in the morning (which can be converted to 3:15 in the morning for everyone with a 9 am to 5 pm job) I had to rise and be acting until I then went to work. Which was awful. Then, that evening, I carried out my second digressive_obscenity recording with Will, which went excellent after a ten or fifteen minutes false start due to shitty audio, but, aside from having a great session, I have now figured out how to patch in anyone with an iPhone, thus solving the problem of interviewing anyone who isn't in the room with me. Once November rolls around and my schedule clears a bit, I'll focus on DO and really get things swinging. I spent the past few days working on some transitional music and also on creating some art for the podcast, mostly with some glitch art apps. Some really cool looking stuff coming soon.

The next morning I was up early for an audition that well very well...no...an audition at which I, personally, sounded really good. Yeah. So, we'll see.

Then, I was to be up hella early this morning to shoot the FINAL episode of Unker & Physia after rerecording some stuff for TransPerfect on my home rig as well as some silly audition of Target, but, thanks to rain, I slept about ten hours.
Which I needed.
It's hard to be good at acting with such little sleep...
And now the only day we have left to shoot that final episode is the day that I might be booked to record something, so...fuck.

All right, enough of that.

Yesterday, the new tweaker album, call the time eternity, was posted on Revolver's web site and last night I listened to it.
And now I'm really sad.
I'm going to spend more time with it, maybe try a headphones/versus speakers comparison but...yeah, as of right now, I'm really sad.
God damn it.

This weekend will be spent killing the shit out of some more zombies (but only for a fraction of the time spent killing the shit out of zombies a few weeks ago), and finishing the decorations for the Halloween party. I think, for ONCE, Chris and I will have this thing ready before the actual party begins next Saturday.

Then, on the 30th, I shoot my stuff for the pilot of Becca's webseries, then two days of rehearsal for Electromagnetic Theater (radio show/podcast thing) then two days of recording that weekend.

Then, I am fucking done.

Nothing to deal with except for my wedding.
Oh.
Oh shit.

Just kidding, it's going to be awesome and Save the Dates just went out so that's all good.
Again, cannot wait for my schedule to clear up.

Go.
Be free.

This Shit Isn't Worth $382.50

Remember that scary audition I had on Wednesday? With the Screaming Guy?
Turns out I got a callback for it.
For a voice over...for some mobile app...that only pays $450...before my manager's commission.
A callback.
I got there, crammed myself into the tiny ass booth (think half a TARDIS if it weren't bigger on the inside) and then picked up the copy.
Now, for those that don't know, I have some pretty awful problems with my vision.
In a nutshell, I can't see anything, nothing at all, out of my right eye and have something like 40% visibility in my left, which huge swatches obscured by scar tissue on my retina and macula.
Imagine disco static right in the center of your field of vision and scattered clouds of it throughout.
The font on the script was this bolded, crowded type and the light was appalling, we're talking maybe 40 watts.
I've been doing this professionally for almost ten years and I've dealt with situations like this before, I tend to hold the copy up as opposed to using the stand and I'll turn towards the light, no muss, no fuss.
But, between the font and the light, my read was sounding like shit, I was pausing and hitching and it was just not sounding good at all.
So Screamy (who has been totally cool thus far, no screaming or anything) gets on my headphones and says that he wants me to have a fair shake at this and what I'm doing is sounding stilted, is there anything they can do, print it out bigger or bring the mic out into the room (because my head is, literally, pressed against the ceiling of the booth if I stand up straight) or whatever.
I say that making things brighter or printing it out bigger would be perfect.
Everything is still fine, no screaming or anything, although I'm walking on eggshells because I know this guy is a fucking volcano and I do NOT want lava on me this early in the morning, but then, after trying to print this thing out on three different machines without luck, he's getting a bit haggard.
He says he can't get it to print out and then he turns on a lamp in the room I'm now standing in (he took the mic and stand and everything out of the booth and placed it in the middle of the room) and we try it again.
And of course it sounds like shit because of all this and it's still not bright enough and the font is still fucked and this guy is totally pissed about the printer and it's getting projected onto me for making him go through all this and as soon as I leave he's going to explode and kill everything and etc.

So, that was great and totally made me feel excellent for the rest of the day at no point during which did I want to sit in a dark room and weep softly into a lavender scented body pillow.
At all.
And all this for a callback.
For a voice over...for some mobile app...that only pays $450...before my manager's commission.

So. Much. Auditions.

Playskool, Optimum, Cavalli, Virgin Mobile.
High energy and excited, straight shooter- think Nick Offerman, masculine and sexy, investigative journalist- think Walter Cronkite.
THAT was my week.
Can I share with you how happy I am that none of these were speced with that ol' industry shitsicle* "friendly...not announcery...with the hint of a smile..." ?
Very, I'm very happy.
Also a bit fatigued from all the voicey mouth talking.

At some point, I'm going to write something about how funny it is that it isn't the whole of Total Recall that's based on the Philip K. Dick short "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" (which is almost as bad a title as "Philip K. Dick"), but rather the first twelve minutes.
Makes me curious to see if the new movie is a remake of the 1990 version or what.
Here's hoping there aren't any puppetcheasts *SHUDDER*.

I might also talk about how enjoyable the, sadly short-lived, Spider-Man animated show from 2003 is (once you get past the futuristic gay club music tin which the whole series is basted), especially when directly compared to the show from the mid to late 90's. Man, was that writing shit. Although the final episode, in which Spider-Man meets Stan Lee as Stan Lee was pretty fanboytastic.

One thing is for goddamn sure...there will soon be a fiery, bile-soaked, hate-drizzled fuckrant aimed directly at Halle Berry Vad Actress.
I just found out that she is going to be a lead in the "Cloud Atlas" film adaptation.
Only Christina can express how upset I was.
I actually had a tantrum.
Then, poor girl, she tried to ameliorate the situation by saying, "If it makes you feel any better, they styled her really well," at which point I unleashed the most sarcasm I've ever produced at one time on one person.
I then saved myself a swift punch in the face but informing her of that fact and asking if she were all right.
Fucking Halle Berry.
SHE'S NOT AN ACTRESS.
Ugh.
No.
Save your hate for later.

Something is happening this weekend, but I have no idea what.
It might involve Doctor Who or the new Spider-Man movie or finishing Silent Hill 2 with J Rock, but I honestly have no idea.

I may also have a Clue/Cards Against Humanity thing next weekend.
These cards are burning a hole in my games hutch.
Games. Hutch.
Hutch.

Then I'm going to god damn Alaska for a wedding.
I plan to embrace and then be mauled by a bear.
I may also steal a puffin, if I see one and can lure it to my person.

Meanwhile, I continue to sweat profusely at all times.
I haven't been in my bedroom for more than five minutes in over a month and will continue to live in my living room until THE SUN FUCKING CUTS OUT THIS BULLSHIT.

All right.
Go now, and know that I am uncomfortable.












* Yeah, a Popsicle made of shit, you got it.

I'm Going To Talk About The Batman

First things first: major spoilers regarding Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises ahead*, so, there's a reason beside disinterest to not continue reading...

On Thursday last, I came down with a horrible case of Bane Mouth and had to call out of work...what excellent luck that it cleared up right before I headed out to see the Dark Knight trilogy at 34th street's fake IMAX** theater with Jay and Paul and Steve and Jose.
All of whom you don't know but are, nonetheless, real.
I was going to show up at 3pm, but actually found myself tittering with excitement in the shower at about 1:30, so I got out and showed up at 2...right behind ten people and Jay.
About ten minutes later, Steve showed up and, after reading a sign, discovered that we were standing in the line for the Bourne Legacy screening (which, oddly enough, I had turned down an invite to earlier that week) happening at the same theater.
He lead us to the correct line where we were still about ten or fifteen people back.
We stood there and geeked our fucking balls off until about 5pm, when, just as those horrifying isolated thunderstorms were beginning...we were let in.
Guys...we were handed posters...and lanyards.
I worn mine for about five minutes and then took it off, feeling as though I had gone too far.
I'm not kidding, even I have limits.

Then I somehow managed to eat a whole burrito with only a dozen or so grains of rice spilled***, which made me very proud in a way I haven't felt in, literally, decades.
There was more talking and then the (totally gayballs) "IMAX calibration sequence" began.
I have seen ONE other film in IMAX: the re-release of The Exorcist whenever that was...I was in college I think...and, after seeing these three movies in IMAX, I will never see anything in IMAX again.
It was loud to the point of parody. Each footstep was a gunshot, each gunshot was an apocalypse and each explosion was instant anal prolapse.
The upside of anal prolapse is that it can only happen once.
Trying to understand Batman's growl-screaming-through-stuffed-sinuses-with-a mouth-full-of-rock-choked-mud and Bane's ball-gag-made-of-live-rabbits-German?-tinged-yawn-thunder was hard enough without all the music and sound effects turned up to "Go Fuck Yourself If You Can't Hear Shit".

Anyway, the trailers came on, the only one of which held any interest for me was the "exclusive" Skyfall extended trailer...which made me wish, for just...one...second that I was about to see that instead...but then...Batman Begins...begans...or did it?
No, it did not.
Now, I've only seen Begins a handful of times, maybe five, maybe less, but something felt...off...a moment later, I knew why: the lackwit in the booth pushing buttons...pushed the wrong button...and The Dark Knight Rises began to play...at 6pm on Thursday.
At first, people seemed upset...but then they kind of got quiet...because we were about to see the new, final Batman movie we'd been waiting for since one second after The Dark Knight ended in 2008 a whole six hours early...which I was totally fine with because I had a VO booked for the next morning at 9:15.
But, right around the time Bane was causing a ruckus in the airplane, it stopped.
The reaction was mixed.

Then, well, they showed Batman Begins and, after a thirty minute break or so, The Dark Knight.
And they were the excellent movies they've always been, except for the are-you-really-sure-this-should-be-this-loud-there's-blood-coming-from-my-nose-mouth-ears-and-dickhead IMAX sound pummeling.
Also, I'll admit, I was getting antsy and tired.
I have NO earthly idea how those freaks did the Avengers marathon (five 2+ hour movies PLUS the two and a half hour Avengers flick) or those Oscar marathons, but after two movies, I was ready to leave.
Then, they ran the trailers again and the movie finally started.

Hm...what to say that hasn't been said already...
Well, it, in no way, topped Dark Knight. Liam Neeson is great and Tom Hardy was great as well, but I could not take my eyes off the screen when Heath Ledger was on it.
I was so convinced that Nolan would have found a way to trump himself, but, he didn't. I mean, the scope was bigger, and the tying in of the first two movies was very well done, but I wanted this to make me forget about Dark Knight...not that I wanted to forget it, I wanted to be made to forget it, dig?
Anne Hathaway did all right, I suppose, but I really have trouble seeing her as this generation's Grace Kelly...could someone maybe point me at something amazing that she's done to earn this auspicious title? I mean, her boob was pretty cool for those ten seconds in Havoc, but Grace Kelly?!
Bane turned out very nicely, although turning up his garbled voice is really not the same thing as having him re-record it. I saw in an interview that Tom Hardy based Bane's voice on a gypsy bare-knuckle boxer named Bartley Gorman, the character's intelligence...and hiss Caribbean background.
No.
No no no, he sounds German.
German is how he sounds.
Except for the times when he sounds like Sean Connery ("Come now, Doctor...thish is not the time for fea-ah...that comsh latah...").
Oh, and when he picked up the microphone at the stadium?
Guys, insult to injury, can we get some fucking subtitles please.
The first time I saw the film (partially because of the goddamn IMAX ear-fucking), I did not catch everything Bane said, but, after seeing it for a second time on Sunday with Jen and Chris, I got everything except for the second to last thing he says to Dagget before whatever horrible thing he does to him off screen because this is PG-13 and we don't want to scare anybody.
"I am here to rumble tummy rugby rhubarb watermelon guggle tup" is what I think he said.

Also, at times, although the movie is one hundred and sixty five minutes long, I felt like stuff was missing...for instance, the way the bomb goes from 23 days to 18 hours to 12 hours to 11 minutes in a matter of, what, ten real time minutes?

And, how did Bruce Wayne get back from the prison to Gotham, how did he into Gotham and how did he know everything that was going on with the bomb while he was away?

My biggest problem with The Dark Knight Rises actually had nothing to do with the cast or crew of DKR...is had to do with that tubby pothead fuck, Kevin Smith.
Back in mid 2011, casting news for Rises came to light.
Now, announcing Tom Hardy as Bane gives away that the villain (or a villain, in any case) will be Bane.
Announcing that Liam Neeson will be in the movie could mean one thing or another (flashback, hallucination, that he is Ra's Al Ghul, the immortal Demon's Head!!!!, whatever).
But.
When Smith and his equally fuckfaced companion announced on their podcast that Marion Cotillard was cast as Miranda Tate...but that she was really playing Talia Al Ghul...well, fuck!
I have no problem with announcing casting news, this is one of the most anticipated movies of all time and casting news and set photo speculation is all part of the enjoyment for some people, but, fucking shit in a teapot CALL SPOILERS!!! I'm looking forward to the film, I don't want to know things that will potentially ruin the plot for me, which is, by the by, exactly what these idiots did.
At first, I tried to forget.
One more time: I tried to forget...which, any neurologist will tell you is physically IMPOSSIBLE.
DON'T THINK ABOUT MY HUGE PENIS.
See?
Doesn't work.
So, once I gave up trying to forget that this woman happens to be the grieving daughter of Batman's first and greatest enemy whose ultimate plan is to destroy him and the city he has sworn to protect...I tried to hope that this would be revealed early on, maybe...in the first three minutes of the film? Like, in a flashback, her and her father are sitting somewhere (maybe on that same patch of ice Ra's and Bruce fought on), and he tells her:

RA'S AL GHUL:  Daughter, my daughter, Talia, for that is your name, Talia Al Ghul, the daughter of Ra's-

TALIA AL GHUL: Yes, father, I get it, I'm your daughter.

RA'S AL GHUL: Yes, of course, sometimes I forget...if anything should ever happen to me...like dying in a train wreck caused by some billionaire who is also a bat man...avenge me by becoming a socialite and then blah blah blah...whatever.

But that didn't happen.
(Also: it's pronounced "raysch", not "razz". It's in the comics, it's in Batman: The Animated Series and, in Batman Beyond, they actually address the fact that it is not pronounced "razz", so I don't know if it was one of the Nolan's or that no one wanted to correct Liam Neeson, but...yeah, "raysch", not "razz". Please continue.)
What happened was, from the moment she first appeared on the screen, I was 100,000% completely aware that she was secretly working against Bruce Wayne AND Batman. So, every time Bruce entrusted her with something important I cringed.
"I want you to take care of my company" (fuck)
"I want to get naked in front of you" (goddamn it!)
"I want you to be in control of my god damn nuclear bomb machine hidden under the fucking city." (fucking WHAT?!)
And, all the while, I'm looking for something in the film that would give her away so I can start enjoying this movie as it should be, but NO (except for that part with the scar on her shoulder...sort of), not until, literally, 97% of the way through the film, when she takes off her mask and goes, "Ah ha! I am not who you thought I was! I am, in reality--"
Yes, yes, do shut up, Marion.
So, because of that, a lot of this film was ruined for me.
I like being surprised (even if this wasn't the biggest surprise in the history of cinema) and these dickless cockhounds ruined it for me OVER HALF A YEAR BEFORE THE FILM CAME OUT.

More gripes: the way Nolan wrapped/set everything up? Bitter fucking sweet.
If he had said, look, I'll make another Batman movie in ten years, I would have been okay with setting Gordon Levitt up as the new Batman, but this is it. They're rebooting the goddamn franchise in something like a year, this world is finished.
That's just cruel.
Yes, it was an amazing ending, but...cruel.
Okay, enough bitching, how about what I liked?
A lot.
I actually got chills when Bane uttered those magic words, "I will break you", and then snapped Batman over his knee.
Amazing.
The scene where Bane makes his way above ground while a fucking child is singing the National Anthem right before Bane destroys everything...in New York City?! Are you kidding me?! Mr. Nolan...you have pushed alll the right buttons, you horrible bastard.
In. Sane.
Oh, and bringing Scarecrow back as the judge was pretty inspired, although I would have loved to see Zsasz come back...he is one of those characters you really can't soften up for animated shows or even PG-13 movies...he kills people and then cuts himself to keep track.
I mean...fuck, he very well may be the darkest Batman villain out there, and the simplest.
We see him at the beginning of Begins getting released into Crane's custody and then again threatening Katie Holmes and that annoying kid when all hell breaks loose; in fact, if you look closely, you can see, when he turns his head away from the camera, a whole bunch of fresh looking scars on the side and back of his neck.
THAT...is what...I am talking...about.
But, badgers can't be choosers and all that.
Al in all, it was a great wrap up to the trilogy, tying everything together beautifully. Was it as perfectly standalone as Dark Knight, but, honestly, can anyone suggest something that would have topped that without it sounding ridiculous?
If so, I'll direct it.

All right, there it is: my completely disorganized bitchfest pertaining to the Dark Knight trilogy.

Note: After speaking with my friend Will who pointed out a basket full of additional plot holes and reading this article from Kotaku, I must admit, the film is harder to enjoy, but, hey...he's Batman.








*I am going to fuckrant my bowels out soon regarding spoilers, their importance and why they're fucking called spoilers.
**Not not NOT to ever be confused with XMAX.
***I haven't actually seen the movie yet, I'm just seeing how much minutiae I can get you to read before you stop-- oops, there you go...

Passing with flying colors...although one of the colors is brown.

The past week was the Hospital's annual visit from the State Department of Somethingorother and, just today, I was informed that we passed...except for the following issues, which were taken from the CEO's e-mail to everyone:

• MDS did not accurately reflect resident status (pertaining to dental)
• Care Plan not updated in a timely manner after a resident fall
• Documentation – refusal of care not documented for several days; vital signs were below set parameters
• Food in the kitchen was not stored in a sanitary manner to prevent foodborne illness
• Facility did not implement hand washing practices consistent with accepted standards of practice
• Facility did not ensure documentation accurately reflected resident condition

Can you guess which two I'm about to discuss?

Yes, numbers four and five.

In my eight years here I have never, ever, EVER eaten ANYTHING that came from the kitchen.

To do so would be to invite horrifying osmotic poops and screaming gastrointestinal nightmares.

And that is not my bag.

How is it that I know not to ingest such poison? Well, believe it or not, the reason is pretty closely linked to item five on the above list: because these scummy fucks in the kitchen don't wash their hands after handling their filthy genitals.

WHO DOESN'T WASH THEIR HANDS AFTER EXPELLING WASTE FROM THEIR BODY?!

Five year olds and the people that work here.

And I wouldn't eat food prepared for me by either.

One question though: how did the State know about these unsatisfactory hand washing conditions? Did they post people in the bathrooms? If so, my earlier question needs some refining: WHO DOESN'T WASH THEIR HANDS AFTER EXPELLING WASTE FROM THEIR BODY WHEN SOMEONE WITH A CLIPBOARD IS HANGING OUT IN THE BATHROOM WITH YOU??!?!?!?

Fucking idiots, friends, fucking...idiots.

*sigh*

Oh, and don't think that any of this stuff is going to be addressed or corrected...what happens now is everyone has a "we didn't get shut down" party...the food for which has been prepared by people with feces on their hands.

Bon appitit!

Switching gears to something that does NOT involve eating food tainted with fecal matter, right at this moment, one Philip Tucker and his blushing bride, Grace, are speeding their way to a new and better life here in the northeast, more specifically, Massachusetts.

I am beside myself with happiness and excitement with their advent.

Next step: get Virgin Galactic and NASA to open offices in New York and get Will and Diana over here.

Then we open an ice cream shoppe and watch the hijinks ensue!!!

All right, I'm through.

BUT, check this shit out, something positive about this weather: my hair looks amazing.

And you're jealous.

It's Been A While

Fuck you, Staind.
You've managed to ruin a phrase that people say all the time.
Also, your name is misspelled and you sound like a MORE awful Limp Bizkit.
But, hey, at least Fred Durst died from that exploded appendix...the one I sent him that was full of hand grenades and needles covered in hep-C.
So, Happy New Year after all, I suppose.

I have been in quite a busy state.
The Grind Show audio book project, which has sort of had no real deadline, suddenly has a very hard, very real, very fast-approaching deadline.
But, after a solid weekend of rerecording and editing, I am almost done.
I need to edit my rerecord of chapter 2 (the original chapter was not as action packed as it should have been) and then, barring some huge, computer-related cataclysm, the Grind Show audio book is finished.
Cannot WAIT for people to hear this...
More information coming soon.

Then there is my upcoming trip to Los Angeles.
I'll be attending They Might Be Giants' 30th anniversary concert, seeing a recording of Jay and Silent Bob Get Old (as will Will's lovely wife, Diana, who, thanks to Will, has NO IDEA what she is in for) and, hopefully hanging out with Grahme Skipper and Dan Delgado, he of the terrifying, knobbly word cock.
When I return, I will be a mere four days from my 31st birthday party...which will feature liquid...motherfucking...nitrogen.
There will also be other awesome science things to do.
I plan to wear a lab coat and quote Portal all evening.

When I find the time, I have been playing my copy of the Metal Gear Solid HD collection which has cleaned up, prettier versions of MGS 2, MGS 3 and MGS Peace Walker.
I've always loved these games, but was reminded of why after playing Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the first, chronologically speaking, Metal Gear game.
The depth to these games is...incredible...
The entire series is based, not on running in guns blazing, but in staying hidden.
You can potentially, if you're amazing and Japanese, play every single game in the series without being seen by the enemy and by taking them out with non-lethal force.
It requires skill and patience, but it's possible, and you're rewarded for both.
And then there is the story...
I'm planning on playing the whole series in order just to get a clearer pictuire at the ridiculously convoluted, super-Japanese plotline.
I say "clearer picture" because that's really all you can get when it comes to Metal Gear.
That should carry me into 2013 nicely...

Aside from reliving my fondest tactical stealth action memories, Chris and I have been watching the sixth season of Dexter, which, despite the inclusion of such television and movie stars as Tom Hank's son and Commander Adama from BSG, was really awful.
Except for the last thirty seconds.
Again, if you want something cool, just watch the last thirty second of Dexter, season six.
With the events of that thirty seconds, season seven promises to be good.
HAS to be. 

Along with all this, I've recorded some VO for new friend/collaborator, Phil Maniaci, who was a co-producer "Bitter Sweet", the short film that was too scary for Steve Buscemi, rerecorded some Lenovo VO for TransPerfect and, tomorrow, I have my third session with Speakaboos, in which I will finish where I left off in my recording of the alphabet.
I was on "G".
Which stands for "green".
The color, not the fad.

Very exciting times.
Very exhausting, exciting times.

The Most Interesting Voice We've Ever Heard

A few days ago, I was contacted for an audition which, due to my recent illness, I was unable to attend.*
Here's what the client was looking for:

The most interesting voice we’ve ever heard. He’s likeable and authentic. Distinct. Masculine. Confident. Comfortable in his own skin. Someone you look up to. A storyteller.

The most interesting voice we've ever heard.
While I know the client (it's a very mainstream product for very mainstream people) and their previous ad work (it's fucking everywhere all the time in New York), I'm not going to say the name, just in case, but, one thing I will say: in the end, this ad will not feature the most interesting voice anyone has ever heard.
But, Paul, they said they were looking for the most interesting voice they've EVER heard! It's right there in the spec!!!
Yes, Other Me I'm Making Sound Like An Idiot For The Purpose Of Proving My Point, I know, but, you have to understand, when people like this say something like that, they don't mean interesting to everyone, they mean interesting to their trudging, brain-dead demographic.
So, if one were to go in with a for-real-and-true interesting voice, these folks would probably grimace, say "weeeeeird-ooooo" and move on (after high fiving in assent).
Not that I consider my voice interesting. I believe it can do some interesting things, but I've never had anyone say "you have an interesting voice".
It's deep and rich like buttered sex leather (I actually have gotten that before) but I would not say it's interesting.
Crispin Glover has an interesting voice.
Alan Rickman has an interesting voice.
Emo Philips has an interesting voice.
But the idea of any of these actors doing a voice over for THIS company?
I can feel their wallets shriveling at the thought of trying anything so...risky.
God forbid that someone other than their demographic thinks something they do is interesting! Why, that might get them more customers and what kind of business wants that?!
More money? Thank you, sir, but, no, we'll do just fine with our brand of not-actually-interesting interesting.
Another hint as to how this will not, in any way, be interesting: all the words in that description: "likeable", "authentic", "distinct", "masculine", etc. are what's known as "bullshit".
These words appear in almost every voice over description out there (along with my top three favorites: "warm", "friendly" and "not announcery").
You see where I'm going with this?
How are you going to do something interesting if you only use old and tired buzz words?
There's no math to it...
Anyway, I can't wait to see what these guys think of for "the most interesting voice they've ever heard".
I'm willing to bet you'll forget this commercial before it's even over.

* But please believe me when I promise you this is not a "sour grapes" thing by any means. I go on enough auditions to not let these things bother me.

BEACH GAME!!!!

11.30.11
3:22 pm
 
Recently, I watched Danny Boyle's "The Beach".
It should have been titled "Someone Took A Shit On The Beach".
Because watching it was the equivalent of stepping in a pile of sand-covered feces on a beach...for two hours.
Danny Boyle earned a hell of a lot of cred with "Trainspotting" and lost it all on this bag of balls.
From the random character choices made by characters you didn't care about to all the pointless yelling and then the fact that the idea of paradise is a bunch of smelly hippies with an unlimited supply of weed.
Yes.
Paradise is a commune, folks.
Run by Tilda Swinton, perhaps the strangest-looking woman in Hollywood...although she was great in "Constantine".
And, at the end of the movie, all the poor, life-is-too-hard-man-so-just-roll-up-a-joint-and-let-the-sun-GOOOOOOO-BAYBEEEE!!!! stoners have to leave their sticky, green Shangri La and return to the real world.
Total bummer, dude.
I'm sure once they reconnect with their respective dealers though, that life will be a little easier.
And thank goodness for that.
I'm willing to wave away this fart of a movie simply because everything else this guy has done has been great and everybody gets one.
"The Beach" is Danny Boyle's one.
Let's move on...
 
In anticipation of Fincher's "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" remake, I've been reading up on him.
Did you know the first thing he directed was a music video for Rick fucking Springfield?
It's for a song called "Bop Til You Drop" and could not have less to do with Rick Springfield or bopping.
It (sort of) still holds up and was probably one of the weirder things on MTV at that time.
Or certainly one of the most ambitious.
After a handful of interviews, I realized two things: that he's kind of a megalomaniacal, control-freak dick (which makes for a great director) and that I need to watch more of his stuff.
I had totally forgotten that he directed "The Game" back in 1997, a movie which involves Michael Douglas in an "ARG" when an "ARG" was merely something the Hulk exclaimed in comics.
If you haven't seen "The Game", see it.
It's a brilliantly made mindfuck of a movie.
Michael Douglas is great as is Sean Penn.
Granted, it's one of those "The Usual Suspects" type revelation movies, but, also like "Usual Suspects", it's fun the whole way through.
And it still holds up.
I plan to rewatch both "Panic Room" and "Zodiac", though I remember not loving either of them.
Then, once I've gotten through them, I'm going to do "Fight Club" and "Se7en", two of my favorite movies.
Between those two and "12 Monkeys", I learned to love Brad Pitt for more than his DSLs and myriad abs.
 
So yes, in short, avoid "The Beach" like a dirty hypo lying on a beach and embrace "The Game" as the kick ass future glimpse it was/is.
 
Also, next Friday, I am going to be recording a bunch of characters for an upcoming Speakaboos project.
Google Speakaboos, think of me and then laugh and laugh.

Eat A Dick, United States Postal Service

11.1.11
3:54 pm
 
I was just on the line with the U.S. Postal Service's awful phone robot and it asked me:
"Are you in the business?"
Then a saucy pause.
Then: "The 'getting it there safe and sound' business?"
If I had had an employee of the USPS in front of me at that exact second, I would have screamed and laughed and torn their face from their skull, all at the same time.
And then there would have been diffused, polite applause from everywhere and nowhere.
And I would have smiled.
Stuffed their newly removed face into my mouth and smiled.
Chewed, swallowed, grinned, danced then smiled some more.
If I were running the Post Office, I'd go waaay out of my way to make sure the things that are already annoying in regular life (i.e. fucking awful phone robots) were much less annoying in relation to the PO.
I'd hire Morgan Freeman to read haikus about puppies.
Phone robots already make one want to tear peoples' faces off, but the Post Office...?
No one ever goes to the Post Office unless they fucking have to.
No one ever just calls the Post Office to say, "Hey, you guys are doing a great job. Keep up the good work and enjoy your still-attached faces."
No.
They go there because they didn't received something at their home.
They call because something went wrong, perhaps something costly.
And when you are calling the Post Office or the DMV or your insurance provider or any other organization that has a horrible-yet-completely-justified-and-proven-time-and-time-again stigma against it, the LAST thing you want to hear (aside from some disinterested freak with a wet sock in its mouth on the other end of the call) is something like the above awful phone robot statement.
WHY ARE THEY MAKING THINGS WORSE FOR THEMSELVES?
Even if you are coolheaded at the start of the call (and I will argue that years being on the other end of asshole phone calls has made me very sympathetic to these ball gargling fucks), by the time you've listened to the awful fucking phone robot go through its spiel six times, you're ready to...oh, I don't know...remove someone's face and eat it.
So why are they poking their proverbial stick into our proverbial wound?
Do they want people to scream at their idiot employees and tear their faces off?
Maybe this is all some trolling scheme to get great "Difficult Customer" training tapes for future employees?
Whatever the case.
Eat a dick, United States Postal Service.
Eat a massive, rancid dick.
 
In unrelated news, I've started editing The Grind Show again.
Halfway through chapter 29...which is huge, the longest remaining chapter, in fact.
After that, it's all a soft, sexy slope made of buttered leather.
Why have I suddenly returned to editing?
Well, because I have completed Batman: Arkham City, and I enjoyed every second of it.
There are approximately two things they didn't do as well as the first game, but they are minor enough as to not even count in the end.
And the end...oh the end...
I believe this might be the best ending to a video game I've ever encountered.
At least since Red Dead Redemption, but, fuck that, this is Batman.
I'll be replaying it soon, but it isn't going to consume my life as it did when it was fresh, so, don't worry, Phil
TGS will be fully edited well before the end of November.
Let us give thanks...to me.
While I'm not charging Phil anything for the recording and editing of Grind Show, he wrote me a little something that pretty much made everything worth it.
 
Over the weekend...the shitty let's-have-a-blizzard-just-to-fuck-with-Paul weekend...Chris and I had our Halloween party.
It was a sad state of affairs for an hour or so, but then people showed up and then more people showed up and it then began to kick ass.
Should have the '11 Freak Fuck video up soon so you can all either reminisce or feel left out.
Whatever.
 
I think that's all I'm willing to tell you at the moment.
Don't press me.
DON'T.
PRESS.
ME.
 
Don't.

Subway? No Way!!

10.25.11
5:09 pm
 
Actually, until I start making more disposable income, I kind of have to take the Subway.
But, at least I can whine about it!!!
For instance:
You know how MTA just spent/is still continuously spending thousands of months and trillions of dollars in order to, somewhat, catch up with the trains in Washington D.C. five years ago?
You know, by utilizing bleeding edge tech to put up some shitty LED displays informing commuters when the next train is arriving?
God damn do they love to jerk themselves off about those fucking things...and then play around in the ejaculate like hungry porn stars...
Anyway, I was watching one of those earlier today (a shitty LED display, not a hungry porn star...), and saw the next train clock jump from three minutes to one minute.
"Okay," I thought, "that's not too crazy, what's sixty seconds among friends?"
But then...the train after that jumped from thirteen minutes...to eight minutes.
My first thought was: wormhole.
Obviously.
Then I figured that there must be a supercollider somewhere under the city of Manhattan (supercolliders do stuff to time, right?)
And then I realized that, despite millions of months and quintillions of dollars (over a hundred per month coming directly from yours truly), those fancy, astonishing-in-1992 train clocks...don't work correctly.
But, please, don't let MTA know.
I could easily see them suspending service on every train line going to and from Manhattan just to make these things work a little less badly.
Maybe only be off by four minutes...
**cue "Great, Big , Beautiful Tomorrow"**
Like I say (out loud) in response to those self-satisfied placards plastered all over the interiors of every fucking train: no, I don't care about when the next train is arriving, just that it is, in fact, arriving, and will continue to do so for more than a week at a time, you cockmeisters.
Oh, and, MTA, if you even think about shutting down stations in order to put in carpeting (AKA Wino Vomit Sponges/Disco Crackhead Yoga Mats), I swear I'm going terrorist and killing the world.
And it will be your fault.
There.
At least now, when I get arrested or flagged or something because of that statement, they'll know why.
And I'll totally get a fair trial, because my peers (of which my jury will consist)...are rad.
 
In other news, I finished reading Chuck P.'s latest, Tell-All.
I might be done with this guy.
After Haunted, everything has been down hill.
His characters' gimmicks and quirks are getting in the way of the story and everything feels smaller than it used to, less significant.
Rant was also pretty good, but Snuff felt like a slice of a bigger work that, I suppose, Palahniuk was too lazy to write, and Pygmy was just dull.
Nothing has been as cluttered with literary falderal or as effortful to drag my way through than Tell-All though.
Man, was that not enjoyable...
Anyway, the new King comes out next week.
The one about traveling back in time to stop the Kennedy assassination.
Yeah.
That wasn't a joke.
So I guess I'm going to have to read that...
I also have the latest Dresden book on stand by.
I want to read it, lord oh lord do I...but I know I'm going to burn through it in three days, so I'm saving it for...something...
Might dip back into the Hunger Games series as the first one was pretty great.
 
And then there's Batman: Arkham City.
Mother fuck what a huge, amazing, mindblowing game.
I've completely the main story and I'm only 60% through the whole thing.
Yeah.
Tasty.
 
This weekend is our Halloween party, although I fear it is going to pale in comparison to years when Phil, Grace, Jeannie, Rich, Kathy and/or Molly were in attendance.
But, no worries, we have a contingency in case things get too slow.
Poison.
 
See you Saturday!!!!!!
No trains to Queens!!!!!!
 

7:29 pm

I've just had my very first Take 5 bar.

Quite enjoyable.

 

Marilyn Manson. Shockingly Unshocking.

So that short film that Shia LeBoeuf did for Marilyn Manson is on You Tube, probably for the next twelve minutes due to its ridiculously NSFW nature.
In a nutshell, it's a music video for a new Manson song (which is pretty awful) intercut with Manson reciting Shakespeare while horrible atrocities are performed.
It is hilariously overwrought.

Here are just some of the "shocking" things you'll find in this video:

• Two women having sex in a glass container in front of a child


• Nazis


• Manson shaving the heads of two old, naked and oiled women


• A transvestite in a teddy being groped by an amputee


• A prosthetic eye placed in a woman's vagina


• Manson shooting some guy in the head

Hilarious.
You can view is HERE, if you want but, again, it is VERY NSFW and the Internet itself will probably erase it before You Tube does.