So, when my wife and I moved to our current city, it was early-to-mid-recession. Therefore, in a rather creative attempt to find work, among all the other places I applied, I figured why not submit my info to a casting agency? Until better work comes along (which it eventually did), why not hang out as an extra or something in one of the productions slowly raising our burg (or at least, the look of out burg) in the nation's film-and-TV-watching consciousness?
I never heard so much as a peep from the casting agency with which I signed up, until after I found other work. Since then, I've received the occasional email from them, mostly for roles that seem just slightly off of the information I gave them (for an older guy with their own kids, when I have yet to have my first child; the wrong ethnicity; roles for someone with -I paraphrase here- "rugged, but not perfect good looks", and who wants to think of their look that scrupulously for something they're not going to do?). Sometimes, the information has been just carelessly off: roles for moms or grandpas.
But sometimes, just sometimes, the role they sent me was so wildly off of anything not only that I could portray, but that anyone would expect to portray, that I had to hold onto the email. The classic one was a role posted for "Little Person [which I am not] MALE", with the description of the role reading, in total: "MUST BE ABLE TO SWIM.".
My greatest concern is what on earth they were planning to do to whatever little people responded to the role posting. Sure, maybe some fluffy piece on how we're all the same in the water. But something in the all-caps tone of the description prompted me to worry that the role might be in some drunken college flick where they toss (forgive the term: I'm trying to illustrate the idiotic mindset) "midgets" in an alligator-infested moat in the background, to see if the average watcher of that kind of crap can tear his eyes away from the "Girls Gone WILD!" in the foreground of the frame.
Never did I find out what happened with that role. And maybe, now that I'm publicly mentioning it, I won't hear about any other roles. Or maybe they'll only send me the weird ones from now on.
In any event, it was the email I received today about a role that prompted me to write this blog entry: It was entitled simply "Overweight [again, which I am not] Man", but the description read, "Male, white, 40-50 years [also, which I am not]. Interesting face and features. Will be naked and bouncing on a trampoline for the shoot. Scars, tattoos, piercings okay."
I don't know whether to be deeply offended at the assumption that I am any of the things NOT listed in my description to them when I signed up; or deeply concerned for the poor, naked, obviously being-laughed-at-for-his-weight person who responds to this.
In any event, rest assured I will not be naked and bouncing on a trampoline any time soon. Well, not at the same time, anyway. Talk about rug burn…
For those of you who are just getting to know my writings over the Inter-Muh-Nets™ and don't know what I look like, you're welcome for the (partially) spared visual. For those who do know what I look like, sorry, but I can't pay for your therapy to remove that image. And for those who go searching for pictures online, prompted by anything in the last few paragraphs, I don't need your web traffic, sicko!
(Says the guy who brought it up…).
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Wash your mouth out with SOPA
Just a thought: the two videos I linked in my January 17th post, as well as any reference to anything else of cultural relevance that I've made in this entire blog, could be grounds to shut it down without due process, if either of the SOPA or PIPA bills under consideration now in Congress pass. One of my favorite references to this fact from today is this one*, which I could also be shut down for referencing, if these bills pass. See where I'm going with this?
So while I'm clearly blathering on through many other sites' blackout today, that doesn't mean I'll always be able to (and more importantly, potentially, for you, that you'll always be able to) unless we raise our congresspeople's awareness of the big precipice they could be pulling us all over, if they don't think more closely about what they're doing.
* (some potentially inappropriate but not explicit cartoon representations, as well as a dirty word or two. tbyc™!)
So while I'm clearly blathering on through many other sites' blackout today, that doesn't mean I'll always be able to (and more importantly, potentially, for you, that you'll always be able to) unless we raise our congresspeople's awareness of the big precipice they could be pulling us all over, if they don't think more closely about what they're doing.
* (some potentially inappropriate but not explicit cartoon representations, as well as a dirty word or two. tbyc™!)
Keeping a leash on my thoughts
Last night where I live, it dumped buckets of snow. Then, in the morning, it dumped buckets of rain. Just as yellow and blue make green, so too do snow and rain make slowly receding slush. My wife and I took the dog out & slogged around much less far than we had intended to, as all three of us got drenched and freezing and desirous of a return to residential heating.
Those piles of slush had looked so placid and inviting. Clearly, the sky has it in for us.
In any event, when we got in, I peeled the dog's soaked coat off of it (Yes, the dog has a coat. It's a short-haired breed with no undercoat, but besides that, we are clearly the kind of dog owners who want to embarrass our dog.), and balled up the coat and leash to toss on the kitchen counter.
My wife threw up her hands in exasperation, wiped down the counters with antiseptic while wondering aloud how I never died of food poisoning while a bachelor, and said I should have beelined to the bathroom with these things, to drip dry in the shower. She then disappeared with them, apparently off to prepare for her day, where there were not people throwing dirty things onto clean.
The dog and I stood dripping and blinking at each other in the mud room. I then shrugged, grabbed a towel to dry it off, fed it breakfast and we went about our day, too.
I came home a few hours later to walk and feed the dog, only for its coat and leash to be found… nowhere. I looked where we normally keep them. I looked where we don't normally keep them, but where I may have seen them once or twice before. I looked where I've had dreams of them being. I looked where I had never conceived of them being. Nothing.
It was getting late, and the dog was looking at me like, "What is this game you're playing? The rules make no sense. Oh, and I gotta pee…". So I let it out to gingerly pick through the slush and do its business, while I prepared lunch. Texted my wife to ask her where the doggie gear was.
The dog came in, ate its lunch. Played a bit with its bone, gamely ran when chased, chased when I stole its bone. When things calmed down, it looked at me like, "I'm not sure why we're not on schedule, but at least you're worth staring at for a while." The dog does that a lot, in lieu of anything better to do. It's a bit unnerving, in the evolutionary that-wolf-thing-staring-at-me-could-rip-out-my-larynx-if-such-a-thought-ever-crossed-its-furry-mind manner, but also incredibly endearing in the "You've done so very much for me in my short, cute life. I wonder what you are going to do now?" way.
When the fun of staring at me was complete (I think the dog is usually fairly generous in this regard: I don't find myself particularly engrossing to stare at.), it then rang the bell to go back outside. I had hoped it had meant to finish doing its business, but it was instead fascinated with the now more quickly melting slush. Prancing around and munching, batting at it and leaving cute little paw prints all over the yard, just to see how much area it could claim in a medium other than pee. That was some fun, at least… even though the poor dog was shivering its little tail off.
It was getting late, and my wife wasn't getting back to me.
Well, at least the dog had gotten in a good play, if not a good walk. Oh well. So while I went to go do my business prior to leaving back to work, I passed the shower in the bathroom. The shower, that held…
The coat and the leash. Where my wife had told me to put them.
At the same moment, I received a text from her telling me where they were. And then another, apologizing that it was probably too late for me to use that information to actually walk the dog.
Now, she hadn't earlier expressly told me that she was putting them in the shower, but she had disappeared into another room with them, just after telling me I should have done so.
Something tells me I'm going to have to work on the whole "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" thing. Soon, I'll have more than the dog's mind to compete with: there will also be a baby's mental development to measure up against. Hmm…
Those piles of slush had looked so placid and inviting. Clearly, the sky has it in for us.
In any event, when we got in, I peeled the dog's soaked coat off of it (Yes, the dog has a coat. It's a short-haired breed with no undercoat, but besides that, we are clearly the kind of dog owners who want to embarrass our dog.), and balled up the coat and leash to toss on the kitchen counter.
My wife threw up her hands in exasperation, wiped down the counters with antiseptic while wondering aloud how I never died of food poisoning while a bachelor, and said I should have beelined to the bathroom with these things, to drip dry in the shower. She then disappeared with them, apparently off to prepare for her day, where there were not people throwing dirty things onto clean.
The dog and I stood dripping and blinking at each other in the mud room. I then shrugged, grabbed a towel to dry it off, fed it breakfast and we went about our day, too.
I came home a few hours later to walk and feed the dog, only for its coat and leash to be found… nowhere. I looked where we normally keep them. I looked where we don't normally keep them, but where I may have seen them once or twice before. I looked where I've had dreams of them being. I looked where I had never conceived of them being. Nothing.
It was getting late, and the dog was looking at me like, "What is this game you're playing? The rules make no sense. Oh, and I gotta pee…". So I let it out to gingerly pick through the slush and do its business, while I prepared lunch. Texted my wife to ask her where the doggie gear was.
The dog came in, ate its lunch. Played a bit with its bone, gamely ran when chased, chased when I stole its bone. When things calmed down, it looked at me like, "I'm not sure why we're not on schedule, but at least you're worth staring at for a while." The dog does that a lot, in lieu of anything better to do. It's a bit unnerving, in the evolutionary that-wolf-thing-staring-at-me-could-rip-out-my-larynx-if-such-a-thought-ever-crossed-its-furry-mind manner, but also incredibly endearing in the "You've done so very much for me in my short, cute life. I wonder what you are going to do now?" way.
When the fun of staring at me was complete (I think the dog is usually fairly generous in this regard: I don't find myself particularly engrossing to stare at.), it then rang the bell to go back outside. I had hoped it had meant to finish doing its business, but it was instead fascinated with the now more quickly melting slush. Prancing around and munching, batting at it and leaving cute little paw prints all over the yard, just to see how much area it could claim in a medium other than pee. That was some fun, at least… even though the poor dog was shivering its little tail off.
It was getting late, and my wife wasn't getting back to me.
Well, at least the dog had gotten in a good play, if not a good walk. Oh well. So while I went to go do my business prior to leaving back to work, I passed the shower in the bathroom. The shower, that held…
The coat and the leash. Where my wife had told me to put them.
At the same moment, I received a text from her telling me where they were. And then another, apologizing that it was probably too late for me to use that information to actually walk the dog.
Now, she hadn't earlier expressly told me that she was putting them in the shower, but she had disappeared into another room with them, just after telling me I should have done so.
Something tells me I'm going to have to work on the whole "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" thing. Soon, I'll have more than the dog's mind to compete with: there will also be a baby's mental development to measure up against. Hmm…
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Blood is thicker than koolaid
So, our dog has this spot on the end of one ear that due to the dry weather, or its habit of sitting DIRECTLY in front of the heater, or un-carefully brushing through the bushes instead of doing what it's told, or maybe due to all three reasons, this spot tends to get a bit bloody. It's usually scabbed over, and I've never seen it get on any furniture or anything. But over the weekend the dog came in, and upon flopping its head back and forth to shake off after having its head gear (a gentle leader contraption without which the dog would pull us across several states) taken off, the walls in our mud room looked like this:
(From Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums)
(Images from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Dunno what that music is, or what it's doing there, though. Yay for YouTube!).
My wife wasn't there, but I decided to get the dog all patched up before she might bring home a pregnant blood aversion, and do the same thing as the above video, but with puke.
So I got out the first aid kit (both the human one and the dog's) and put on some some calendula, as well as some Neosporin and a band-aid. Miraculously, the dog didn't wig out at those tasty unguents and sales disappearing past its eye to be applied just out of sight, and then covered over with something sticky and skin-like. In fact, the dog amazingly settled down & didn't even pay its new accoutrement any mind. I theorized it decided "Well, Daddy put it on me. Usually when Daddy puts things on me, they make it better. Maybe it's an earring! I want one of those, cuz I'm a dog, and of course all the prettiest dogs have earrings!". Of course that's what the dog was thinking. My theories are always correct.
So I got out the first aid kit (both the human one and the dog's) and put on some some calendula, as well as some Neosporin and a band-aid. Miraculously, the dog didn't wig out at those tasty unguents and sales disappearing past its eye to be applied just out of sight, and then covered over with something sticky and skin-like. In fact, the dog amazingly settled down & didn't even pay its new accoutrement any mind. I theorized it decided "Well, Daddy put it on me. Usually when Daddy puts things on me, they make it better. Maybe it's an earring! I want one of those, cuz I'm a dog, and of course all the prettiest dogs have earrings!". Of course that's what the dog was thinking. My theories are always correct.
The dog and I then settled down for a bit of a post-walk nap (which involves sitting on the couch, the dog cuddling up next to me, and me dozing until something falls down and I get jerked awake). Unfortunately, while the band-aid stayed on, it didn't really stem the flow of elevator kool-aid or whatever. So when next I got the dog to get up and eat, I used this stuff called styptic powder, and it dried right up, even after further ear floppings. Which is good, because that's what my wife had told me the first time she saw the ear bleeding. Her theories are also always correct.
It's also good because I had been (jokingly) imagining something like the following interaction with my wife when she got home:
(NOTE: Some very brief not-safe-for-work-or-kids language. Think before you click!™)
(From Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums)
Cast whichever of them you want, as either of us. I know how I'm leaning. Just don't think of "Rachel" as anyone real, cuz we know and love several Rachels we'd like to keep very much alive. And while we're at it, don't cast our dog as Buckley, cuz of what happens to him later. And it's not quite high-strung enough to be Spark Plug.
Actually, wow: let's keep Gene Hackman alive, too. He was apparently just in a (non life-threatening, but still scary) bicycle accident, a few days ago!
Update: Well, band-aids, as you know, fall off. Oddly enough, they fall off of flopping, hairy dog ears even faster than they do off of relatively sedate, hairless human skin. So when it fell off again, my wife (apparently without a pregnant blood aversion. Good to know!) put two band-aids at the end of the dog's ear, one perpendicularly over the other, so it formed a heart-shaped pattern. Aw… now that dog has got a serious (Sirius?) fashion statement going!
Which is good, because the more we fiddle with its ear, the more apprehensive it gets at letting us. Bleeding doesn't seem to hurt (and it's not still bleeding, but we're just covering it up in case…), but repeated fiddling just out of sight, particularly when one lacks opposable thumbs to do what we're doing, is apparently freaky. Who knew?
Update Two: Apparently, there's some sort of regular pill we can give the dog, to make the edges of its ear heal soft, supple and silky smooth. It's some condition that's easy to fix. So we're taking the dog to the vet tomorrow.
Watch the side effects of the pill include bursting out into Barry White songs in appropriate basso profundo, in the middle of the night. Or the dog's fart clouds getting a visible green cast to them. Or growing antlers or something. But will the treatment be better than the symptom? Only time will tell…
Friday, January 06, 2012
Epic Fanny (in the American sense, sicko…)
It seems interesting to me that January 6th is traditionally labelled "Epiphany" in the Christmas season calendar. Maybe it's because it's the day we realize we can't keep our New Year's resolutions?
Wednesday, January 04, 2012
Caniz Navidad, Caniz Navidad…
Our holiday cards this year show me, my lovely (and radiantly pregnant) wife, and our dog, in its new Christmas sweater. The shot we went with, in fact, is the only one in which the dog is looking at the camera. Its posture in this shot is a partial profile, looking judgmentally (as it got more and more tired of the picture-taking process) down its nose at the camera. It also had one front leg draped over mine with a jaunty crook to its elbow, and its paw hanging limply down, almost hand-like.
The dog, as much as anything else in the otherwise wonderful picture, also turned out looking great. It almost seems to be saying, "I don't always pose for holiday pictures, but when I do… I make sure it's with a hot Mommy, a lucky dork of a Daddy, and one heck of a cute little sweater on!"
The dog, as much as anything else in the otherwise wonderful picture, also turned out looking great. It almost seems to be saying, "I don't always pose for holiday pictures, but when I do… I make sure it's with a hot Mommy, a lucky dork of a Daddy, and one heck of a cute little sweater on!"
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