Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

Posting from the airport since most of my day will get devoured by flying, layovers, and mystical time zone sharks. San Diego was fun…met some cool people, caught up with friends, and basked in the utter awesomeness of artwork (spent a lot of time wandering through artist alley and the fantasy illustrator area). I’ll post more about the show later, but to all the great people I met this week, thanks for the laughs… and the liver damage (but I know it’s liver damage of love).

A question about actor-in-waiting career choices…

As an actor waiting to hit the right audition at the right time, I’m working temp jobs to pay the bills. I was thinking of finding a better job to cover the rent and help with my acting career. Maybe some grunt work at a Hollywood studio or something like that. What jobs would you recommend for an actor-in-waiting to keep his dreams alive?

Mickey R., Rancho Cucamonga, CA

Dear Mickey,

Patience is tough when the universe won’t get off its lazy butt and line up everything for you when you want it to. Patience is even tougher when the landlord’s a paramilitary freak with access to anti-personnel mines and a Barrett M107 .50 caliber sniper rifle. But don’t worry, The Creative Adviser has ya covered. We scoured the country far-and-wide looking for the best stepping stone careers an actor could wish for.

And here they are, The Creative Adviser’s Ten Best Jobs For an Actor-in-Waiting…

I went to lunch yesterday, and it was a beautiful day in the Dallas area–temperature in the 90s, sunny, clear skies. A big change from what the weather’s been like recently. My first instinct was to grab lunch to go and sit poolside at the hotel soaking it up and killing off my programmer’s tan. But I had work that needed to get done and didn’t want to lose track of the time basking in the sun, so I decided to wait until after work to enjoy the weather just to be safe. Know what happens when you wait to take advantage of a gift like that?

Yep… you find yourself turning around to the sound of thunder and the sight of dark clouds blotting out the sky five minutes before work ends.

It felt like the status quo for me lately. Whenever something fun comes along, my instincts scream at me to take advantage of it, but the parts of my brain in charge of responsibility, commitments and consequences are really quick to step in with a gentle prod of the shotgun barrel to get me back in sync with my chain gang. I used to follow those instincts and have my fun, but it hasn’t been as easy to take those risks lately. Is it all part of growing older? Is it all a symptom of life conditioning me not to take as many risks? Is it an evil corporation’s ghost parrot sitting on my shoulder to make sure I stay on the path of the good little drone?

Maybe it’s time to hang out at the pool and have a little fun.

Since there are lots of theories roaming around the ether, and I was joking around about the Powerpuff Girls reference, I thought I’d take a more serious stab at theorizing. Or at least point out an interesting connection with another project. The thing that caught my attention through all this madness was the mention the creature in this possible giant monster flick was being referred to as “the parasite”. It got the wheels turning in my brain because it sounded so familiar… and it clicked this morning. A human astronaut taken over by a space parasite and upon returning to Earth goes into a feeding frenzy to become a…

A really fun comic book by Steve Niles and Nat Jones, but on the downside of this theory, I’ve never seen a mention of it being optioned (which is a shame actually).

Just catching up on some blogging now that I’ve gotten a chunk of writing and coding out of the way. For the coding, check my Comic Book Headlines website (looks mostly the same except WW Chicago and San Diego Comicon 2007 listings have been added… and there were lots of behind-the-scenes changes to set it up for adding some new features in the near future) and keep an eye out for some neat changes for the Brat-halla webcomic (new character pages and well… something special). For the writing I’ve been working on… it’s a secret, so you’ll just have to be patient. ^_^

Other things from this week: put together new t-shirt designs for Thor and Hod from Brat-halla (since we just hit 200 episodes of the webcomic this past week), researched lots (and lots) of mythological beings for the Pantheon Games arc of Brat-halla (for nearly 60 deities and creatures possibly making an appearance in the webcomic), added an extra 30 minutes to my workout routine, took my son to see Transformers, and met a waitress whose parents named her after the porn star featured in the movie they were watching the night she was conceived (sometimes I think writers project an aura capable of bringing weird stuff to them).

Rambly time…

• Cloverfield? Yeah, I saw the trailer before Transformers. Yeah, It’s gone viral. Yeah, the marketing is definitely ramping up the intrigue value. But why am I mentioning it? Cause after the trailer, my son looked at me and said, “That was scary, dad. And it was spooky.” In fact, I was chatting with my wife about it when I got home, and he jumped in with, “And it’s got a giant monster.” Never saw a monster in the trailer. Never mentioned a monster to him. But there was enough hints to make him think it was one. There’s all this conjecture of it being Gojira or Voltron (which hasn’t even started production yet… but it does have Robeasts) or some Lovecraftian inspired tale of Cthulu. But when my son mentioned a giant monster without seeing one in the movie, I tried to think of what he’s watched that has giant monsters in it. One show came to mind immediately, and thinking about it, the concept could really catch these Internet sleuths and theorists by surprise…

…live action Powerpuff Girls. ^_^

• Cool thing to note: Alamo Draft House (Lake Creek) playing clips from the original Transformers movie before the show started.

• Cool thing to note #2: My son reciting the lines being spoken in those clips from memory (he’s watched that movie a few dozen times at least).

• Skinwalkers. Whether they be Norse skinwalkers or Native American ones… they’re technically not werewolves. I’ll go into more detail on that subject here on the blog later (I have a lengthy yet half-written post about the subject from when I first heard about this movie over a year ago).

• Cool thing to note #3: San Diego Comicon… less than three weeks away.