A Quick Shift in Gear

On March 18 and 24, I posted the first two parts of what I expected would be a series of columns on my latest adventure as an actor, which involved a brief appearance on a current television show. If you managed to read them, good for you.

However, I was advised to take the pieces offline because the network reportedly takes a dim view of any public discussion of a particular episode before it airs, and whether or not my carefully phrased posts were likely to offend the powers-that-be, it was thought best to remove them. So I've done that. I fully intend to re-post them, and more, after the particular show gets broadcast, but until then we'll just have to wait.


The initial section of the first one acknowledged the fact that "American Currents" had lain somewhat neglected since early February, and noted some of the previous activity on this site as follows.

Periodically, since this site became largely mine by default in the spring of 2010, I’ve taken readers on a series of junkets. There was the experiment in collecting recycled bottles and cans for cash redemption (five essays between May 15, 2010 and September 2, 2010), my adventures as an actor in 48-Hour Film Festival projects (which ran August 14, 2010; August 16, 2010; August 20, 2010; August 24, 2010; and September 16, 2010; and never got completed), and a quick three-fer in October 2010 about the use of obscenity in protesting military actions. I also wrote two columns about reading Proust.

My longest series was of course entirely unforeseen and unplanned: a ten-part report on the Occupy Portland camp after it set up 8 blocks from my apartment, with two “pre” columns and three post-eviction commentaries. The final report, “Raking Leaves and Revolution,” on Dec. 17, 2011, has links to all the previous ones, if you want to catch up on them. (Which is not to say Occupy Portland is dead. Far from it! Check out my interview with Jake, an Occupy Portland organizer, on the Pop2Politics show that originally aired Feb. 26, 2012.)

There were also series that were not particularly intentional, but whose subjects (Tiger Woods, Sarah Palin, and our country’s military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan -- neither quite over yet, and the latter newly hot in news again with the killing of 16 civilians by a U.S. Army Staff Sergeant earlier this month) kept popping up in the headlines for one reason or another.

Nearly 2 years later, the Kyron Horman case remains unsolved. And on Jan. 29 of this year, “Pop2Politics,” my political talk show which was the brainchild of Jeff Weiss, the founder of American Currents, launched online. We’ve discussed the ongoing Republican primaries, the crash-and-burn of the Komen Foundation, the Catholic Church’s objection to Obama’s health reform regulations, the rise of Rick Santorum, and many other topics. Click on the graphic for the show along the right margin of this page to get to the archived programs.

I can also direct you to other video clips online from my work as an actor and commercial model. One of my earliest jobs was an appearance in a Web ad for AutoCAD design software for Macs, which was shot in August 2010 and appeared online a month or so later. I also did a short bit in Web ad for Verizon Wireless: you'll see me playing a businessman between 0:58 and 1:12. Although I only had a few brief appearances in it, I acted in a 48-Hour Film Festival project in the summer of 2011-- my third year doing that contest -- called "The Plot." It's a nifty little story that was shot in 3-D and HD, and though it's best enjoyed with color-coded 3-D glasses, it can be viewed and enjoyed without them.

Normally, an actor or model spends most of his or her time and effort trying to look younger. But last fall I got to shoot a short promotional video for a retirement center, Avamere at Sherwood, in which I pretended I was older and more decrepit than I am. That was a refreshing switch.


Working in film and video, you sometimes have to cut an audition on video. I have several online from unsuccessful attempts to land jobs. Here's one I did for an instructional video for alcohol servers. We shot in early January 2011, so my videographer's Christmas decorations were still up around his house. Watch for the subtle flexing movement by his cat, Desdemona, toward the end of it. Here's a rather high-powered Web sales pitch audition that's so over-the-top it approaches self parody.


And then my favorite, an audition for a casino's tenth anniversary. My agent suggested I audition for both the client and the dealer. I did each audition separately, with the cameraman reading the cue lines, and left the studio assuming my videographer would submit them that way. But he tried intercutting them, and even though we hadn't planned to submit it that way, it almost works.


For a blog, this is admittedly filler. But I promise to get some new material online soon. By the way, March 28 was my birthday. I had a lovely evening singing karaoke -- from David Bowie's "Fame" to Alice Cooper's "Welcome To My Nightmare," Ray Stevens' "Gitarzan," and The Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" -- with friends and family.