So the bad news is that it got down to me and one other guy for a great part in a great pilot but I’m trying to think that the good news is that it got down to me and one other guy for a great part in a great pilot.

I’ve always remembered the general feeling of disappointment and frustration in the showbiz world, but I’d forgotten about the specific feeling when one “misses it by this much”.

In other good news: Thursday, 3/21, I’m going to be on the Glee! show program. You can blink and I’ll still be on the screen, but don’t blink for too long. I think. Of course, my “scene” could be cut.

In the very same email, he talked about how he opened two new offices.

I wrote him back congratulating him on being able to open two new offices in the face of “devastating budget cuts”.

Save any dollar bills acquired during the day’s activities. This will make you think twice about spending money as the method causes a pack of gum to cost a minimum of five bucks.

Then, at the end of the year, you have money for an iPad or a bunch of one dollar bills to send to someone who is harassing you about getting paid.

Five Hundred Thirteen Dollar Bills

It has been so hot here in Burbank, but I love the heat because it makes the nights beautiful.

We sat on the steps and I told him about how I love summer nights. How I always felt like nights in the summertime were a reward for the cold and hard times people go through the rest of the year. Even a break from the heat of the summer days. He didn’t really get it much, but it sort of distracted him from having his quick transition from a great day with mom and dad to bath and bedtime.

He loathes sleeping. We think he might feel like he’s missing something. He will kick his legs or move his arms just to keep himself awake.

Back to the matter at hand:

I aksed him to listen to the sounds because they were specifically summer night sounds.

“What can you hear, Duncan?”
“Crickets, a car, rollee pollees…”

On cue, a train whistle blew. Perfect.

“You hear that?”
“A train!”

We were whispering by now.

I aksed him if he heard the cars on the freeway. He nodded.

He leaned into me and I put my arm over his shoulder. We sat there for a while. Some more crickets began chirping. I told him they were singing to each other so they could sleep.

Duncan said “I like the night because it makes everything glow in the dark.”

I got teary because I’m a wuss like that.

If you’re a mac user, save this in
HD>Users>machinename>Library>Application Support>Sublime Text 2>Packages>User with whatever name you like that ends with .sublime-snippet

Grab from <snippet> to </snippet>
I named it siaf.sublime-snippet because I’m clever like that!

<snippet>
<content><![CDATA[
// function:
(function(){
	$0
})();

]]></content>


<tabTrigger>siaf</tabTrigger>
</snippet>

Without You, I Would Die

1. Without the USDA, Americans would be eating food laced with feces because farmers don’t know how to grow food, or “Big Agra” would force us to eat meat infested with the poop from genetically modified super-rats bred in a nuclear reactor.

2. Without the FAA, Boeing would have a monopoly on airplanes and all airlines would let drunken pilots fly rickety planes.

3. Without labor laws and labor unions, those planes would be manufactured in freezing (in winter) and sweltering (in summer) factories by 10 year child prostitutes earning fifty cents a week while their homeless, unemployed parents fought each other in the streets for coal and radiated rat meat.

4. Without the FCC, the lucky winner of a weekly child-porn-snuff-gameshow broadcast on a fundamentalist Christian pedophile network would be chosen to fly all of the nation’s airplanes.

5. Without the DOE, only the children of Wall Street and Wal-Mart executives would be allowed to attend schools where the curriculum would be crack-smoking, bible study and “non-whites are bad and lie about global warming” taught by anti-government Atheist Christian Islamic child molestors.

6. Without drug laws, labor laws and the FCC, Wal-Mart would force heroin and crack addicted children to compete in televised duels for the opportunity to be crack whores or pilot unsafe airplanes.

7. Without anti-trust laws, Wal-Mart would be the only store. Half of the year they would only sell products made from the skin, blood and hair of Pakistani children for 99 cents. The other six months prices would be raised so high, children would be forced to work as greeters. And prostitutes.

8. Wthout the FDA, “Big Pharma” would manufacture diseases and sell useless, treatments no one could afford at the Wal-Mart pharmacy.

9. Without welfare, “Big Business” will forbid charity and “the poor” would die on your doorstep while you sit in your mansion masturbating to the 24 hour Ayn Rand television channel.

10. Withouth the DOE and teacher’s unions, teachers would be unemployed. Any existing teachers would be shot at by all of the cancerous heroin addicted children issued guns by “big gun” at Wal-Mart.

11. Without the Department of the Interior, roads would only be availble to rich white people and would be paved over the poor using the bones of the aged as filler.

12. Without the TSA, planes would explode upon departure, or landing, depending on the in-flight movie.

13. Without the FAA, airlines would conspire to every plane that didn’t crash arrive 2 hours late. All meals would contain e-coli.

14. Without ‘the government’ there would be no firefighters or police. Only rich white men would have protection, mainly because they would be the only people with roads.

15. Without labor laws, women’s job interviews would consist of gang-rape conducted by Wall Street and Wal-Mart executives. The handicapped would be kicked in the teeth and mocked during skits at company picnics. Lots of general rape, no lunches and the term ‘work week’ would be replaced by ‘work month’.

16. Without minimum wage laws, employers (Wal-Mart) would throw a twenty dollar bill into a room every month and laugh as employees fought to the death for pay. The winning employee would then be fined twenty-five dollars for damages and raped if female.

17. Without a strong U.S. military presence in every country in the world, those countries without a strong U.S. military presence would be plagued by war.

18. Without Social Security, you will sit in your house watching snuff movies while your grandmother dies on your doorstep.

19. Without an enormous percentage of the budget going towards “defense” the word “defense” would mean “defense”.

20. Without tough, tough, tough, tough drug laws, everyone would be high all the time; especially children because of the forced prostitution to pay for their parents’ drugs.

21. Without the FDA, “big pharma” would never innovate and make bloated, unrealistic claims about their products and there would be not be one effective medication and we would die from eating radiation poop pork in exploding aircraft piloted by children, sick and dying from their bullet injuries and child porn rapes.

22. Without the FDA, shady supplement and quack medicine manufacturers could make bloated, unrealistic claims about their products. Oh. Wait.

I don’t know this Greta. I have a feeling we disagree on lots and lots and lots of stuff… But, she addresses any questions about living without a god that you might still have in this new millennium.

A festival crowd in Sweden singing along to one of the Steel Panther tunes I co-wrote.

Amazing.

So, there were these people who had some money and they decided they wanted to start a new network. They had one show. A new program called Star Trek – The Next Generation, with a British guy as the captain of the enterprise. That was going to be their “flagship” show, but they needed content.

The plan was start in a couple markets on one night and then gradually take over. Fox was beginning to do well so…

The three shows that got the green light for this new network were:
Shades of L.A. – A cop in l.a. who can see through stuff or something.
She-Wolf of London – A girl in London is a Werewolf but has to move back to Los Angeles when the budgets get cut because the new network is tanking.
They Came From Outer Space – Two brothers… no real brothers, i mean… yeah.. two brothers from another planet.. no that comes later. They come to earth to meet girls. And, they feel each others feelings so when one guy is getting laid, the other guy can feel it. It’ll be great. It’ll be the only one hour comedy on television. Ever. (I think).

Stuart “the great” Fratkin and I had just come back from doing Ski School in Canaduh and had become buddies. We both got auditions for this “They Came From Outer Space” show. We aksed if we could go in and audition with each other. We ad-libbed a lot of the audition and we ended up getting the parts.

The show only aired in three cities: L.A., New York and Pittsburgh(!?). That’s why you’ve never seen it or heard of it. It’s now on DVD.

Soon, we will do an OddComment of some of the episodes.

It is definitely hit and miss. The last 10 episodes are “really good”. Yes, that’s in quotes. It’s hit and miss. There are some wildly funny scenes and there is some true crap, as well. That’s what happens when you’re shooting 11-12 pages a day for six months.

But. I had a lot of hair. Also, Stuart was in a committed relationship (he’s with her to this day!!) and I was single and trying to get over the girl who broke me. So you can watch it and see who I get along with. Wink.

The sad part of all of this is that they aired the show all of the time. So much so that when ever I ran into people who’d done guest starring roles, they’d say “Dude, you must be getting rich! I’m getting so many residuals!!! Oh, man!!!”

Well, no. We got royally and completely skrewwwwwed by someone. Not sure who did it. Maybe it was Universal. Maybe my manager. Maybe Finnegan-Pinchuk. Maybe Stuart’s manager. Maybe a combination of the above. Maybe it was just incompetence. But definitely SAG. It’s when SAG became my enemy. Ah well. Who needs a house at 30?

Yes, I’m still pissed about it. Sorry.

They Came From Outer Space – The Complete Television Series

As a professional front end coder, I developed a huge crush on jQuery and have several books on the subject. It’s an exciting time to be a front end dev and jQuery is one of the reasons.

The first thing you’ll notice about Natalie MacLees’ jQuery for Designers is her gentle yet confident voice. She assumes very little experience with coding, but is never condescending or “cute” like some beginning tech books.

Each chapter of JFD takes the reader/student through a collection of jQuery scripts that accomplish various tasks that one uses in the “real world”. From tarting up links, through slideshows and tabs to an excellent chapter on forms, she writes as if she’s sitting next to the reader offering patient guidance as you discover the power of jQuery.

The structure of each chapter is simple and effective:
- What you’re going to do.
- How to do it.
- What you just did.

After a section where you write code, Natalie gives detailed explanations of why you wrote what you wrote and, like good teachers, she’ll let you know what you don’t need to know. A sort of “just do this… i’ll explain later…”
(Speaking of “This”, JFD has one of the best explanations of “this” I’ve seen!)

As the tasks become increasingly difficult, Natalie shows the student where previous concepts are being re-used and how they fit in with new concepts. If you go through JFD from cover to cover, you will definitely be able to call yourself a jQuery ninja.

Like jQuery, the book is platform and browser agnostic, though the screenshots are from a Mac.

If you are just starting out, get this book. It will stay with you through your career.

Even though I was given an advance copy of JFD for free in exchange for a review, it has a permanent place on my iPad as a go-to jQuery reference.