Seriously This is Hot Stuff!

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

More things of Interest in this Post Katrina World

Editor's Note: I know that 2 long posts in one day will probably cause a bit of consternationzz amongst the more genteel fans that I have acquired through endless promotion. Well, let me just state for the record that the reason that there is now a second post today, is for the simple fact that the first one wasn't very good, and I didn't want people to think that I had lost my edge. Also, while sweating to death at Chanello's Pizza today, I had a lot of time on my hands to think up new and exciting ways to make the content better here at Diary of a Future Superstar, that is, when my brain wasn't melting like its on drugs from the lack of air conditioning and standing next to a hot oven all day. Yeah, that'll do it to ya alright. So, with all that said, let's start the show shall we?

Okay, I must admit that the title of this piece is a little bit of a misnomer due to the "fact" that Katrina is actually still around as I write this, only now it is a tropical depression. I don't know who thought it was a good idea to call 50 mile an hour winds a depression but the word clearly is very nondescriptive. When 100 mile an hour winds are coming at you, you can just hear people scream "DUDE THERE'S LIKE A FREEKIN HURRICANE COMING!". Really now, can you imagine people in an uproar shouting about the tropical depression that's heading their way? I sorta picture it as 2 old guys with huge beards, 5 teeth, and floppy hats discussing it on a front porch in kentucky in rocking chairs.

Scene: Somewhere on the front porch of a colonial style house in Kentucky with rocking chairs

Gummy Joe: Hey Abe did you hear about that depression that's posed to hit town tomare?

Honest Abe: I cannot tell a lie. I did not know that Gummy Joe.

Gummy Joe: Well that don't change facts. That depression is gonna ruin my dadburn day. And that's a fact.

Honest Abe: I ain't rguin witcha ya today Joe.

Gummy Joe: Well you best be quiet fore I give you a fat lip!

Well, Enough of that

I didn't mean to get sidetracked by talking about the conversation between 2 old prospectors, what I really wanted to do was to start a new section called....

Why is this News?





- P. Diddy changing his name to just Diddy




- The weekly reports on how much the movie industry made.


First of all, let me state for the record that I think that the purpose of news is to enlighten, inform, and entertain in that order. Forgive me if I cannot see how a celebrity changing his name is a newsworthy event, unless of course that news source has a vested interest in the public knowing his name. If they didn't know his name, then they might forget about him when it came time to buy his new cd and people who are dumb, which is more than 50%, would get confused about who you were talking about.

Do you really think the guy at Wal-Mart is going to be able to direct you to buy the new Diddy album if you ask for the new album by P. Diddy? People that work at Wal-Mart are only there to direct you to whatever aisle that Rice Chex cereal is in.

Next topic: How much money Deuce Bigalow 2 and the Dukes of Hazzard made last week is not news, except for the fact that it reminds you the consumer public that there are movies out there that need to be watched if we are going to kickstart the economy and overcome the crippling, wallet emptying, ever rising price of a barrel of oil.

P.S. I urge you to not watch either of the previous 2 movies ever. I'm serious about that. If you're ever at the video store one day and your wife says, "Honey let's watch that Hazzard movie." Do yourself a favor, and call me at 757-593-2761 and I'll be able to advise you on a much better movie that is suited to your tastes without completely insulting your intelligence.

The Sky is Falling

Hurricane Katrina almost destroyed the world, and to find out about it on CNN.com I have to watch Ditech.com commercials. Ditech charges a flat fee for "closing costs" on a house. Maybe they're trying to put honest hard working real estate agents out of business.

One of the videos I watched showed New Orleans residents staying in their homes.??!!!???? One guy said, "Us French Quarter folks are a hardy bunch." What a fruitcake.

Panicking Next Door Neighbor: There's 135 mile an hour winds bearing down on us!

Fruitcake: Eh, what are you gonna do?

Panicky guy with high pitched voice: I'm leaving that's what, and I think that you should too.

Fruitcake: You want some gumbo?

The Aftermath

Watching disaster videos like I was watching yesterday really puts life into perspective. Life's too short to fret over the little things. Seek out your dreams. Eat pineapples while hanging upside down by your toes.

Dumbest Thing Ever - Heard at a pizza store on Monday

So this black lady walks into the store with her friend who has what appears to be a machette comb sticking out of her hair. They both had that mouth wide open for too long, lip smacking noise, eyes glazed over not looking at anything in particular kind of look. And then the crazy part was that they actually started talking. I know right, I couldn't believe it either.
I will call her Lafonda.

Lafonda: So...um...like how long is your foot long sub?

The Manager: (looking around for a second to gather in air)12 inches.

Lafonda: Yeah, that sounds long enough. I'll take one of doze.

She probably ate the whole thing and speaking of that. I have to eat breakfast and go to work.

Yes folks, duty calls.

But don't worry I'll be back real soon and have more fun with you.

Maybe we could do a sing along or something?

Do you guys know that Father Abraham song?

Friday, August 26, 2005

Nothing to see here

Sorry folks. No blog update today. I know some of you out there in reader land wake up every day and shiver to your spine when I don't put out a new blog. Since I usually only average like 3 posts a week, that means a lot of you are shivering constantly. I don't know how to prevent that, because I just don't have the energy to post everyday, or if I did maybe the posts would suffer? Perhaps that is a copout. This one seems to be going pretty well.

More Shameless Self Promotion and Tom Green
I was doing some random internet cannoodling tonight and I ran across tomgreen.com. I was pretty excited to find out that Tom Green actually runs and maintains his own site. He's also looking for the most interesting person in America, and while I think that this is me, he may not realize that without encouragement. So if you guys wanna go there and email him that it would mean a lot to me. Well, it would only mean a lot to me if I knew you did that. If I didn't find out, your superhuman effort will have otherwise been wasted. I'm sorry.


I emailed and told him I should be in his next movie.

In fact I should star in his next movie as his stand in.

This blog was not spell checked. It should be obvious by now that it is perfect in its original un-edited form.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Pat Robertson isn't part of the U.S. Government?



The world of the news moves very quickly. In the time it took me to tell you that, my statements have probably already been made irrelevant by some new news I wasn't aware of, or some rampaging blogger out there posting pictures of his cat.

Usually what happens is that some event occurs which seems so crazy to the newshounds at fox, cbs, clearchannel, vh1, mtvsucks.com, etc that they all post the initial story on the event which always for some reason comes from the Associated Press. They're always first on top of the story which makes me wonder if they are listening to this broadcast right now. Wait what's that? Do I hear agents on the roof?

Sorry, false alarm. It was an errant pinecone. I'm in pinecone country out here in Seaford. You could say that if pinecones grew on trees, then I'd be rich. And If I was rich I'd figure out a way to live off the pinecones and mass produce them, and ship them to bolivia.

So, the most recent major news story after Cindy Sheehan, the war mother camping out to meet President Bush, is about some comments that Pat Robertson made on the 700 Club about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez whom he accuses of spreading Communism and Islam.

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it," said Robertson on Monday's program. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."

Despite the fact that I thought that no one actually watched the 700 Club, it seems clear to me that some infidels watch this show unceasingly looking for some chink in the obviously unpenetrable armor of Pat Robertson.

Chavez: Has Pat Robertson on the 700 club said anything that was a criminal act lately senor?
Second in Command: Yes your most honored excellency. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club said that the dirty pig dog Americans should kill you.
Chavez: Excellent, now I can raise the price of gas again. I win! I always win! MUHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAAA!

The second in command went on to demand that the United States punish Pat Robertson of the 700 Club for his "criminal actions".

Correct me if I'm wrong, but even though Pat Robertson ran for President in 1998, he isn't actually part of the United States government, so it seems a little bit wierd that the State Department had to issue a statement denying any involvement with any plot that Pat Robertson of the 700 Club may or not have been cooking up involving assassinating the Venezuelan Presidente Chavez.

Was the second in command completely ignorant of the rules of this country? I imagine that in Venezuela, anyone caught uttering ideas about how the Lord Chavez should be murdered would summarily be taken out in the street and flogged just to tease them, and then shot to death.

Sadly, I think the price of oil had something to do with it. I have no doubt that it will jump up 3 cents today because of that. Or heck, maybe it's because terrorists are destroying the oil fields in Iraq, hey, one or the other.

* For those who came in late: Venezuela supplies 10% of the United State's oil supply. That's like a gazillion barrels of crude oil every day and stuff. Which is why everyone in America should buy a Hummer.

Pat Robertson of the 700 Club Responds

After the initial hubbub surfaced, Pat Robertson of the 700 Club claimed that he was taken out of context. Perhaps, he speculated, he was only speaking of kidnapping his majestic self hail Chavez! It is possible, that he might something else entirely, but he was unable to recall.

The High Overlord Chavez Responds
The kind and generous master of Venezuela Hugo Chavez showed he was capable of turning the other cheek and showing how much better he was than Pat Robertson of the 700 Club. Oh the insanity! What would Pat Robertson of the 700 Club possibly do next???

Pat Robertson of the 700 Club Responds Again
Not one to be oneupped, Pat Robertson of the 700 Club told the press that he wasn't mistaken, and yeah that they oughta take out that fat slug Hugo Chavez.

That was an exact quote, and a fitting end to this story which has commenced at exactly the same time that the news cycle has already forgotten about it, since it was really completely unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

I thank you, and good night.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Midnight Madness

This post goes out to a lovely young lady who said that she was creative at 4 in the morning. I told her that I didn't do anything worthwhile at that time and so to prove it I would write this blog at midnight. Of course that doesnt relate at all. There's like 4 hours time difference. I'm almost sure of it. In fact. I'm going to duly note that there is in fact 4 complete hours between midnight and 4 in the morning. Of course with the humidity around here, it feels more like 5 hours.

Back to Work

After filling out like 13 applications, and completing 3 different personality tests in the last 12 days, it appeared that if I continued my course of seeking gainful employment in the restaurant sector that I would die. Scratch that last bit. I meant that it appeared to be harder than it looked to get a job at a restaurant when you have to explain why you were fired from your last job on every application.

I wonder what it was like getting a job in ancient Israel. Could it be that on their applications they had a question like "Do you now or have you ever had leprosy?" noting of course that you could not be discriminated against for ever having leprosy Why should you be discriminated against? Clearly customers at hotels enjoy being served by men in beards with maggot ridden flesh. So yes, you can have a job at my store. Starting today I will pay you 1000 rubles for your work benefitting the company. "But my new Israel Express card no longer accepts rubles." Well you will have to get with the times Achmed, I bet your goat doesn't like eating wheat anymore, but he's going to have to get used to it because of that grain shortage.

Getting back to talking about Work

I had pretty much settled into a comfortable routine of waking up at like 10:30, messing on the computer for like an hour, checking how many people visited my blog, and going to the bathroom before eating breakfast at 11:45 and being complained at to do some work around the house. After that was done, it was time between 2 o clock and 4:30 to hit the restaurant circuit.

"Someone will be right with you", was a popular phrase I heard on my regular afternoon jaunts. This was followed by an occasional interview with a manager type, and then I would get back out into the hot sweltering air, and get in my car, fumble with my ipod, turn on my a.c. and then slowly back out of my parking spot while being paranoid that I was about to be rear ended.

The Sad Truth

Hopefully I will be wearing an apron again and serving Coke products to customers who will almost completely ignore my zany antics again sometime soon but in the meantime, like a lot of people, I need money. So I called up old faithful, Chanello's and was delivering for them the very next morning. It was very boring and all I could think about was how much gas cost while I delivered a sub to a very large man wearing a Fubu hat who hadn't heard about the modern invention of tipping yet.

editor's note - the previous complaint didn't actually happen to Future Superstar yesterday, but it could have so he wanted to show you his pain by giving you a possible example of being annoyed at a bad situation in a bad job.

Geography Test
Where exactly is Boca Raton? Has anyone you know or will ever know has or possibly will go there in the future?

Monday, August 22, 2005

The Life of the Unemployed

I've been unemployed for a full week now and it is awesome! Man there are just so many things I can do now with all this free time. The only catch is that I am broke and can't do anything and it costs like 10 dollars to drive anywhere.

I guess my budding superstardom blinded me to the fact that it can take forever to even get a restaurant job. I went to 10 different restaurants in the last week and they all told me they would call me. For some reason, I have not been called. Could it be that "I'll call you" is just something that people say? How could restaurant managers be less than genuine?

Of course, every service industry has to lie to some degree to their customers, because all customers are angry.

Customer: Where's my thingamabob? I ordered it last week!!!

Manager (labeling package to ship): Sir, we received your order last week. It should have been processed already by our service people. I'm sure you'll be seeing it any day now.

Customer: I want my money back!

Manager: Okay, buh bye.

Pizza delivery places are even more notorious for this. What usually happens is that when there are a lot of orders, bags of pizza inevitably end up lying around for large periods of time while the delivery drivers hang out in the back and smoke.

Customer (smoking large amounts of pot): Hey, I ordered a pizza and hot wings like 2 hours ago and I feel asleep, burned my couch down and still I have no pizza and hot wings, and I really have the munchies.

Manager (motioning for the delivery drivers to go right now): Sir, your driver left 20 minutes ago. He has a lot of orders, but he should be right there at any moment. In fact he could be there right now, why don't you go out and walk around your neighborhood looking for him.

Customer: I see headlights outside.

Manager: It's definitely him. (click)

Customer (to himself): Me hungry.

In other words, don't count on anything ever arriving, especially if you paid less than 20 bucks for it.

In the meantime

I'll talk to you guys again tommorrow and relay more exciting tales of life on the road!

Friday, August 19, 2005

I was freekin fired Bob!




Recapping our last post, I had just returned from 3 days on a television shoot, when upon arriving back at work in the morning, I quickly discovered that something was wrong. I realized this right away when my normally smile bearing manager Amber told me with a frown, "Hey Josh come here to the office. I need to talk to you about something." This was seriously going to be a talk about something, and I have never liked those talks about "something", because usually it turns out to be "something" that I don't like.

This sort of talk occurs with some frequency to me, and it's usually when I've done something screwy that someone doesn't like, that I wasn't aware of. Like when I was at Elim Bible Institute in Lima, New York; I was always doing something that somebody just didn't like. I never knew what it was exactly, but I came to dread those little white envelopes that would appear at my doorstep with some regularity that year, informing me that unbeknownst to me, I had committed some infraction and perhaps some punishment to fit the crime would be meted out. I mean, how was I supposed to know that it was a bad idea to start at what for everyone else was the opposite end of the lunch line? There was only like one other person in the line, so it didn't really look like I was cutting off anyone. It sure seemed like a bad idea to this obese hogbeast of a dorm monitor that informed me, "Josh, you're at the wrong end of the line." "Well", I calmly informed her, "Perhaps everyone else is at the wrong end of the line."

This line of thinking didn't sit too well with the dark council so I was banished to my room for a week except for meals, class, and the bathroom. During this time, there occurred the largest snowball fight in recorded history on the lawn of the school between approximately 200 students and a gopher. I could only watch in not so mock agony from my bedroom window. It was one of the worst moments of my life, however I did save a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to that company that sells car insurance. Later the gopher appeared on Oprah to tell his side of the story.

But going back to jobs, it seems very clear to me that I am quite suited for getting fired from a number of jobs, simply because they don't list explicitly what it is exactly that you can get fired for. This means that the term "inappropriate behavior" can have a host of unexpected uses. One of these uses could be you, and you too could wind up fired. Do you like to do handstands in the hallway? I don't know, could it be...hmmmm...INNAPROPRIATE??? How about telling your boss that you like him a lot better than you like that bad movie, and he doesn't take it so well. Is that inappropriate? No, but it sure is funny, and your boss will never look at you the same way again.

Alright so some of you may have realized that there was a story going on back there someplace that I never quite finished and you may have either wondered what was happening, or you were too busy reading about gophers. Never fear friends, I may stray, I may wander, but I will never completely abandon an amusing tale I tell in my blog!

Back to the Amusing Tale of Getting Fired

So, I followed Amber back to the office, and she closed the door, looked at me one last time with those sweet puppy dog eyes of hers and said, "Josh they want me to let you go. Some customers called in and said you were leering at their daughter and told her that she was a dumb blonde." Then Amber hugged me and said, "I can't let you work today; you'll have to talk to John in the morning." I appreciate mixed messages as much as the next fellow, so I politely returned tomorrow, expecting pretty much to have my job re-instated, but not before I tell what really happened with the customers. The real funny part of this story is that I have told this so many times in real life that it will probably be boring to like 50% of you reading this right now. For that 50% I do apologize. For the other 50% you should probably pay me for your amusement. I accept personal checks, just please don't write your name in pencil.

The Story

This family of 2 parents, a son, and a twenty something daughter with perfect blonde hair and a pink dress came into Ruby Tuesday last week. Every time I asked the family a question, the dad would sort of mumble and the daughter would end up answering the question for her dad.

Me: Would you guys like something to drink?
Dad: Well, I ..uh. that is...what do you?.....you know
Girl in Pink: Daddy you always get a coke.
(turning to me)
Girl in Pink: He'll have a coke.

So I thought that was just precious and so I thought I would charm her, and impress the family at the same time by saying:

Me: Are you studying to be a lawyer? You know doing that legally blonde thing?
Girl in Pink: No.

HAHAHHAHA. So I laughed nervously, went on my way and didn't think a thing about it, until of course it was described to me later with details changed to make it sound bad.

Returning Once Again to the Amusing Tale of me Getting Fired

So the next morning, I happily arrived at the restaurant, at the location that I had previously described as "work". My store GM, John Gorman, was there and as soon as he saw me he said, "Dood there's no point in talking to me. You'll have to call Craig, here's his number." Craig is John's boss and he leaves his phone number on every table in the restaurant, because business is so bad, that one of his strategies for getting business to improve is apparently to fire anyone should anyone call up and complain about something. Obviously, this is what he did to me. I have yet to investigate to determine whether or not profits have improved or not. More on this next week.

So after ducking me for a day, Craig finally returned my phone calls and after a couple of normal boss to incredible underling tete a tete's involving me asking Craig where we should meet to talk, and Craig sort of muttering something under his breath, Craig finally grew some and told me, "Well we probably shouldn't meet because we won't change our mind about this." Obviously this stopped my conversation dead in my tracks, and it was all I could do to not stammer a quick end to the talk. So I asked him a few more exploratory questions, and these were met with hammer like blows to my best efforts. Naturally Craig wished me good luck and a happy termination. I'm not normally a vindictive sort of person, but I pray that he's slightly less happy and smug tomorrow than he normally is.

This whole sordid incident could have been put behind me already, and I probably could have already had a job someplace else if they had just called me, instead of giving me the run around, but then again, that's why there are bumper stickers that say "Work Sucks".

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

My wacky adventures on the set of the television show "The Psychic Investigators"

This past week I spent 3 days as an actor on a new re-enactment show for The Learning Channel called "The Psychic Investigators." Too bad I didn't know in advance that it was gonna suck. Ha ha that's a joke, but not really. Okay I'm just kiddin with ya. But seriously folks. I know many of you are curious about this whole "acting" thing that I do and how the whole process works. Well, it doesn't work very well but I'm going to spend most of today's blog explaining how and why.

The Beginning

The Learning Channel calls New Dominion Pictures located in Suffolk, VA and says, "Alright you guys pretty soon we're gonna have to start work on yet another quality television program about true and usually sort of uninteresting events that actually happened in the recent past, but not so long ago that we didn't have cars or anything."

New Dominion Pictures is completely unaware of what they are referring to, so The Learning Channel explains to them, "We know that you guys produce television programs all the time for the Discovery Channel and all of these shows are re-enactments of actual events complete with a narrator and bad sound effects. Basically we wanted in on this action and we are willing to pay you because we have come up with a new angle on the whole re-enactment scene - psychics!"

The Learning Channel then gets excited when talking to New Dominion Pictures on the phone and says, "YES PSYCHICS! And Investigators, we want you to call this new show Psychic Investigators. Can you handle that action?"

New Dominion Pictures informs them that they can in fact handle that action, and after receiving a transcript of these true events, quickly gets to work dispatching this transcript to their crack team of probably underpaid screenwriters who hastily fashion a semblance of a plot as well as descriptions of the characters to appear in the show, which are e-mailed to the producers.

The Producers is a popular Broadway show about dancing Nazi's so of course they had no idea why they were being emailed so they responded with an angry letter about commercialism in America and then told them to have a nice day.

The screenwriters figured out quickly that they sent the email to the wrong place, and the producers of New Dominion Pictures got the email of the descriptions of the characters. After that, they used a precise budgetary formula to determine how many characters and scenes they would have to eliminate in order to not pay anyone overtime.

Finally when they were ready they called talent agents around town and faxed them a list of the characters that they needed for the Psychic Investigators television program.

The Squishy Middle

My talent agent, Marsha Wulf of Talent Link, got the fax and was certain that I was one of the people that they should use in the re-enactment of this stirring piece of historical non-fiction. As it turns out, this is because the producers had gotten pictures of the actual people that the story happened to, and I looked like a younger version of one of the detectives.

Marsha gave my name to one of her assistants to do her dirty work for her and so I was called. After receiving the call, I had to check my schedule at work to see what I was doing the next 2 days. Just like my real life, I was doing nothing for the next 2 days, so I quickly agreed to show up in Suffolk, VA the very next day at 1:30. Your arrival time on the location of a set is called your "call time". I did not quite make my call time on time because I had to stop at Wal-Mart to buy new cologne. I bought a bottle called "Lucky You." I asked myself if I was feeling lucky punk, and I was.

I had not done any television work in quite some time and I was excited about getting paid 100 or 150 dollars to sit around all day, eat free snacks, and drink free Coke.

Endgame

I arrived on location, drove past the cushy parking spots reserved for employees and foreign dignitaries wishing to violate our speed limits and not be ticketed because of diplomatic immunity, and parked in the gravel parking lot where the "talent" is supposed to park. Actor's on set are called "Talent"; this is done in great part so directors don't have to remember anyone's name, they can just yell, "Talent in the jeans, get out of the shot!"

When I got in, I signed my name at the desk of the security guard who was busy watching Ultimate Fighting Championship on television. He said, "What's up?" and I said, "Just chillin." Slipping past him I was greeted by a "techie" with a clipboard who asked my name and said into her microphone, "number #2 is here!" A techie can be any of a large number of people who work on the set of a production studio, doing numerous jobs like ordering pizza, taking pictures of talent, noticing any problems and reporting them, holding the "boom", ordering talent to wardrobe, telling the directors that they are doing a great job, and being first in line at the lunch table. You can tell who they are instantly because they will always be carrying a microphone where they can be micromanaged by directors and producers.

I was quickly hustled to wardrobe, where all attention to my presence was focused on what I was wearing or rather what I wasn't wearing. "Do you have "x" article of clothing?" the wardrobe techie asked me, where x is probably a pair of jeans, or 5 as in x+1=6. I changed into the clothing that was needed, and the makeup techie took one look at my face, and it was clear that I didn't have a moustache; obviously I needed one. "You need a moustache", she told me. Nodding in affirmation I sat down in the most comfortable chair in the entire establishment and seabreeze was applied to my upper lip, along with a prop moustache, which after giving it some extra color, and curling it to make it wrinkly, looked like it belonged on my face.

With moustache firmly in tow, I was sent back to the green room. The only problem was I hadn't been to the green room yet. In the hallway I spied some techie's talking and I asked them where the green room was. They pointed to the cafeteria. I thought this seemed cheap for a company with a lot of nice offices for of its staffers, so I responded with a chuckle and the words, "Really? You're not kidding?" Her face turning ashen by the fact that by asking her a second question I was clearly wasting her time. She assured me that in fact, no she wasn't kidding. If this was the comic strip Dilbert, you would have seen the thought bubble above her head, "Must control fist of death."

With the foreknowledge that things seem to take forever on a television studio, I sat down with my books and began to read and enjoy a plethora of free snacks and drinks out of the craft services cart. Despite the fact that this cart contains no glue, buttons, or popsicle sticks it is called craft services, because it is filled with Cheetos, snickers, peanuts, Doritos, milky way bars, Coke, Sprite, Diet Coke, Cherry Nestea, etc. The moveable craft services cart was never far from my mind for the remainder of my stay on set.

I stayed in my seat in that room for the next several hours until dinner time, at which point I had to get up, move everything from the table that I had been sitting at and stand outside and lineup against the wall in the hallway so the whole production crew could get their dinner before the talent did. The food was delicious because there was a full time cook on staff instead of ordering take out for everyone twice in day, which in retrospect wouldn't really make a lot of sense.

Hours later I (#2) was asked to follow one of the techie's to the set, but first she had to take my picture while I was holding a piece of paper with my name on it. Winding our way past hallways, trailers, hot corridors, and outdoor set pieces that were actual finished houses I got to the filming location where I was greeted by no one except for the craft services cart which was always happy to welcome me.

The staff at this point in the process sorta makes you feel like you're in a hospital, because they are talking about you all the time in the third person without actually acknowledging your presence. "Okay, #2 is going to be here, and walk up and staple this piece of paper to this lightpost. After that #2 is going to be here and walk here and stick out his hand. Okay?" A lot of techies were bustling about getting things for the directors, or just waiting to be ordered around.

Finally my moment of onscreen bravado arrived in the form of being acknowledged by the director, who obligingly waved his hand in my direction. All of his directions were about actions I had to perform, like walking a certain path, and nailing a piece of paper to a light post. Keep in mind, that prior to this talk, I had no idea what it was that I was actually supposed to perform, which reminds us actors that our talents are not valued on this kind of set, but how well we can follow directions. I've seen dozens of actors on this type of show be verbally harassed for doing something small slightly of line with the hasty directions they received. "No, No, No I told you to walk here and do this!" the directors will yell at the embarrassed actor who will be forced to adopt a posture of downcast submission with the promise to do better next time. I'm used to this process, so I don't take such impudent behavior personally. All the directors on these production shows are basically jerks that are only thinking about their schedule and how they can wrap up without paying anyone overtime. I was actually shocked when one of them apologized for yelling at one of my friends on set. Usually they're afflicted with a major case of tunnel vision, and don't want to think about anything that may be distracting, such as offending anyone.

After 3 days of this fun filled time, I went in to work at the restaurant where I was promptly fired. See you later for another exciting blog entitled "How I had a creative difference with management: or I was freekin fired Bob!"

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Breaking News Update! Men and Women are Different: News at 11

A study reported today in cnn.com has shown that, amazingly enough, men and women are drawn to different aesthetic qualities of internet pages. I must confess that this is shocking news. I was not aware that there were subtle differences between the sexes.

I am shocked that this story is confined to a small corner of the internet and is not plastered on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. After all, if it wasn't for the normally longer hair, and frontal chest protrusions I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between men and women, and I doubt that Joe Average marketer would be able to either. This study should produce dramatic results in the business world, enabling clothing stores to finally effectively stock clothes for women. We have been caught up in a male dominated society far too long, I say it's high time we took off the shackles of society and firmly embraced cultural change and, dare I say it, a revolution!

Patrick Henry supposedly wanted governments to have some sort of a revolution every 20 years (according to my brother and other government conspiracy nuts) but what the heck does he know? He's a man after all and was clearly only thinking of the men in America, while his wife was at home making him a chestnut pie and figgy pudding.

The article goes on to elaborate a little bit about this earthshattering study done at Glamgoran Business School in Wales. Here is what they found:

Women seemed to like pages with more color in the background and typeface. Women also favored informal rather than posed pictures.

Men responded better to dark colors and straight, horizontal lines across a page. They also were more pleased by a three-dimensional look and images of "self-propelling" rather than stationary objects.


Truly the world has been changed today and I for one want to promote national awareness of the fact that women like more colors than men who just want to "get r done."

The article also raises a very interesting question. I would just comment on it, but then you wouldn't understand the intricacy of the point that has been made. So instead I will quote from the article again.

So should Web sites consider having two faces, one for male users and another for female visitors? Moss said more research is needed.


Whoever this Moss person is she may want to get an interpreter before speaking publicly again, because I think she may have something growing on the north side of her body. Perhaps Moss didn't know that massive companies spend large amounts of money on web sites and don't have room in their budgets to allow for alternate versions of every site out there.

This reminds me of similar articles written by women that complain that videogames are mostly designed for men. Of course it is possible that mostly men buy videogames but naturally that is totally beside the point. Those kind of articles usually complain that the only female characters in videogames are just male fantasies involving string bikini's and large breasts. This is not true, the female characters should also be shooting a double barreled shotgun and spout some sort of catch phrase that would be perfect to repeated by her toy action figure with pull string doppelganger.

However, Hollywood has taught us by way of the excellent documentary "What Women Want" starring Mel Gibson, that men really don't have a clue as to how to design and market products to women unless they start thinking like a woman. Note: it helps if you put on lipstick.

To celebrate this new and innovative way of thinking about the internet and other products, I will temporarily change the layout of the website to pink. Please note, this will be the alternate version of my website. Sadly, I no longer have a budgetary allotment for that.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

How I met a Blues Legend and Lived to Tell About it


Chances are that most of you didn't know that I currently do freelance entertainment reviews for my local paper (Daily Press)'s web site 7 Cities. The site is intended to be a mouthpiece for "What's hot in Hampton Roads" coming from "not old people" locals and sending people out free to entertainment in the area like concerts, prostate screenings, bingo, and leg hair removal.
Normally I just mooch off them to get free movie passes once a month, but recently there's been a shakeup in the hierchy there and the guy in charge of the whole thing is coming off like a shady character, blasting everyone telling them what a lousy job they're doing, and about how they're going to be off the 7cities team if they don't "show up".

Unfortunately, I had to "Show up" "with respect" in a "proper" way and do a review of the blues legend Coco Montoya. I was up till 1:00 in the morning at the show but yet I got an email upon waking up by my editor who told me "Where's that article man?" I pounded out the article in like an hour complete with photos which are available on the site. Naturally the story took 4 days to post and will probably be gone in 3 weeks. Well anyway, enjoy my attempt at real editorial journalism and laugh at the other girl who went to the show and how embarrassing her story looks compared to mine.

I came I saw I blogged

Did you guys know that you can replace the word "blog" with other words in several popular quotes? Well, you can. Chances are you hadn't really given that much thought. But while you're digesting that new bit of information like a well done steak let me give you a few examples of what it is exactly that I'm talking about.

I blog, therefore I am.

This popular phrase is real eye opening, as it indicates that to blog, or pour out your soul to the internet is to indicate existance. On the other hand, that means if you don't blog there's a slight chance that you don't actually exist. Ask the scientologists if you don't believe me.

Give me my blog, or give me death!

To deny someone the right to blog is akin to cutting off their life source. How else could they tell everyone what they did last night, how great the Contender was, and show more ways that George Bush sucks?

There'll be no blogging unless you finish your dinner!

This is a thinly veiled threat that mothers across America use on their kids now in the event that they don't eat their peas and just pick at their tuna casserole.

I went to Niagara Falls, and all I got was this dumb blog.

I did go, and looking back on it this is all I'll ever have. Like last week someone said something about Niagara Falls, and I told them, "It's really pretty at night in the winter with the lights shining on the ice flows." Any of you can feel free to say that to anyone who asks or mentions anything about Niagara Falls. Clearly they wouldn't question your credentials and wonder when you went there, because it should be obvious that you did.

In Conclusion

It should be obvious that blogging should be part of an active and healthy lifestyle, you know, like getting that chicken gordita at Taco Bell, or running to your mailbox to check your snail mail.

For the love of God


I have a new logo in jpeg format but no one out there in blogworld seems to want to email me back. Seriously, it's driving me crazy. If anyone reading this knows how to make this the title of my blog please please write me at joshuadudley@gmail.com, I'll even let you have my name and password to do it yourself if you don't think that I can hack it. And now I am going to wake up. Thank you.

Monday, August 08, 2005

I woke up, put on clothes, ate breakfast, went to work, came home, took off my clothes, and went to bed

I woke up, put on clothes, ate breakfast, went to work, came home, took off my clothes, and went to bed.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

How Outsourcing Saved America

A lot of people are talking lately about outsourcing and how much good it does for America to ship our loser jobs to some foreign country where we pay Pedro, the 12 year old bean counter, the equivalent of 28 cents an hour to lace shoes or work on new Microsoft products.

The reason that I bring this up is that I, along with I suspect a lot of you reading this, are a victim of outsourcing.

The Story

My dad's HP printer wasn't working the other day and since historically if a problem with technology is more complicated then how to start a new game of solitaire, my dad will always call me. For the sake of the story, I will give a sample problem and a sample solution.

Problem: The computer isn't working.

Solution: You have to hit reset.

Problem: Where is the reset button?

Solution: It's on the computer

Problem: Seriously, what's a computer?


Okay, I admit that the last "problem" may have been overexaggerating my dad's lack of technical expertise a little bit. So to make up for that I will introduce another serious of "problems" and solutions.

Problem: My Coffee Holder isn't working.

Solution: You mean your cd-rom drive?

Problem: Whoozy Whatzit?

Solution: Yes, exactly.


Clearly, old people and computers don't mix. There is really nothing that can be done about this. I recomend shipping them all to Africa. Now back to the actual story already developing as it occurs.

The Real Deal

I can't stand calling large companies for help, since they clearly don't like helping anyone. If they did then you would actually be able to get someone on the phone when you dial their number instead of wading through a maze of "press 1 to get to this department, press "2" to go back, or press "3" to hang up."

By the way, anyone that needs a computer to tell them to press 3 to hang up has some serious problems that I can't rectify by merely making fun of them.

The HP website had a link to online help which i decided to make use of as an alternative to writing them a letter or pressing 35 different buttons on my telephone and waiting 15 minutes to speak to someone who is clearly from India.

So naturally within minutes I was typing in an online chat window to an HP service representative who was clearly from India. The amount of time I had to wait after asking any question of Solomon was to put it mildly, exhorbant. If you don't know what that word means, here is a link to look it up dictionary.com. Remember, type in exhorbant and you'll find what you were looking for.

After spending a lot of time typing things, waiting for his response, and then trying to translate his response into serviceable English sentence structure I was about ready to quit. Then the office telephone rang and my dad burst into the room in his normal state (with his shirt off) and demanded that I get up for just a minute. I tried to explain to him that I was fixing his computer and I was online with someone, and for all practical purposes I might as well be on the phone with him. He told me it would only take a minute, which I interpreted from previous experience to mean that he would be talking on the phone for 5 minutes and then be back to playing Solitaire shortly thereafter.

Later, a transcript of our chat arrived in my email:

Solomon: Joshua are you there?

Solomon: Joshua I will be unable to help you if you do not respond.

Solomon: Joshua I have enjoyed helping you as it suits my purposes 100% to enable your printer to function at its full capacity but it appears as if you are gone and so I cannot help you any further. May the stars shine on you and your family.

I repeated the process the next day and spent a nice relaxing hour of my life with Ather. I tried to explain to Ather that Solomon had walked me through a number of steps already, but Ather was very insistent.

Ather: Please Joshua, you must do exactly as I ask If I am to help you.

Me: You are clearly from India. Do you worship Vishnu?

Ather: Joshua I am forbidden from divulging my location, and please do not make fun of my god.

Ather obviously did not gather that I was being a little bit tongue in cheek with him and he wasn't able to fix my dad's printer either. However he did end the online chat session by showering blessings on me and my family for which I am forever grateful.

Which brings up the next problem, how come nobody fixes anything anymore? Printers cost like 200 bucks or less, so how can an industry of fix it people survive by charging nearly 200 dollars to fix something? This goes back to how industries don't want to help you anymore, they want to charge you like 15 bucks a month for an extended warranty which will definitely solve your problem, the only catch of course being that the amount of money that you spend on the warranty with them will be almost exactly equivalent to the amount of money that you could have spent on a new and by now better product.

In layman's terms: Throw everything away when it's broken and buy new junk!

Oh yeah I almost forgot that the main topic of today's blog was supposed to be about outsourcing. Well, in a wierd way it was because I was making fun of Indian's and automated computer voices that "speak" to you when you want to know how 100 dollars could have been charged to your credit card without you knowing it.

editor's note: if the indians speaking in today's blog didn't at least make you chuckle, then try picturing them with giant beards and mustaches.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Restaurant Girls are too Coy, and Other Stories

Why does it seem like you can never get anywhere with girls at restaurants if you work with them? If you casually mention to one of them that there should be some getting together time, she might laugh and say something to the effect of how awesome it would be while walking away and you're standing there wondering if you were taken seriously. That and the fact that all they seem to want to do is get drunk, smoke weed, and have sex anyway makes me wonder if they're worth worrying about at all.

But I digress. I'm much more at home engaging in witty banter over some cheese fries and making fun of the awkward manner of whoever is sitting next to us. Okay, it doesn't really have to be cheese fries, it could be cheese sticks but you get the idea.

I must admit to being a little confused by the hot girl at work feeding me all those lines and then leaving me alone to do all the follow up work if I was interested. I don't know if I was interested, so much as I was intrigued. What kind of time could I really have with the she-devil that didn't involve dirty sex and downing endless series of shots at some non descript bar, or listening to her tell me that she couldn't hang out that night because she was shopping with her friends for furniture. Why wouldn't she take ottoman advice from me?

Rock Star's Sister

So last night I was at Starbucks drinking a tall caramel mocha latte, or whatever they call coffee and chocolate for 4 bucks, and one of my friends was amazed that the resume I sent to a girl got zilch response. He literally said, "What? She didn't respond? That's like the most original idea I've ever heard!" Naturally this requires some back story for you readers.

A few months ago my friend Rock Star's sister came to church. She was flirty, cute, outgoing, and most important of all - seemingly obtainable. The down low was that she wasn't seeing anyone, lived an hour away from the rest of her family, and with her sister. After rocking her world at a local Mexican restaurant that my local church clique and I used to go to on a near weekly occasion I thought I was in. After making her laugh at least 12 times by my humbly inestimatable count I knew I was in. The next night at Cheddars when she started talking about how she was looking for someone "real" who would call her and that she wanted marriage, I was practically seeing stars. On her way out to the car I made my move. Slipping up to her as her back was turned while she was opening Rock Star's car door I told her, "If you give me your number, I'll call you tomorrow."

As she quickly wrote down her number, my heart was filled with Jesus type feelings about our future marriage and what we would name our children. Later when she never returned my calls I had to just imagine what our future dates would be like, and then weeks later I had to imagine what it would be like just talking to her again. After that I imagined a world where you can get numbers from girls who call you back.

Eventually I got sick of her not calling me back and decided to be a little bit shall we say pro-active about it? I had this thought that when you're applying for a new job that you put out a resume and list your accomplishments and what you will do for the company and why they should hire you and so on, and so I thought that if you laid all that out for a girl it would make things a lot simpler. Unfortunately right when I had almost got up the willpower to complete said resume and give it to her somehow, I was derailed for a few months by Massage Demon. The saga of Massage Demon is a blog for another day. Perhaps even tomorrow!

The resume package consisted of letters of character reference from a close personal friend of mine, a close friend's dad, and a pastor. My friend was all for the idea. I told him about, and I had a written letter in my hands the next week. FYI for humanity out there: that's what friends do for each other. My friend's dad, being the old man that he is, was a little cautious and wanted to make sure that I had clear cut intentions. Additionally, he also wanted to let me know exactly how much his opinion was potentially worth to a girl that he had never met, which was zero. As much as I appreciated his vote of confidence, I told him that I would still like to get that letter from him. The "pastor" was actually a friend of mine who used to be a youth pastor and was a licensed reverend so he was technically okay to address the signature portion of his letter with the word "Reverend" at the end.

No one in my family thought it was a good idea. My dad said that I should just write her a short note, and my mom said it was definitely a horrible idea. However, these are the same parents who are convinced that I will end up gay and stabbed to death on a street corner somewhere when I move to New York. They are scared to death of the unknown and tragically paranoid of new ideas and innovation.

I added a mix cd and an 8x10 glossy headshot of me to the overall package in addition to spending about 2 hours on the actual resume itself where I listed my church attendance and missionary trips since childhood, as well as the mentally handicapped kid that I led to the Lord one time. Obviously it was a hard sell, but i just knew that she was buying. I mean, how could she not? Seriously I mean. I'm charming, possess slightly above average looks, and have ambitious drive. What's not to like?

Due to circumstances beyond my control however, the package did not wind up in the hands of Rock Star's sister until she had a boyfriend. I place the great majority of the blame on Rock Star who did not know his sister's address, and was unable to think up any clever schemes to get her address. This would have presented no trouble at all if it was a Three's Company episode.

Note: The previous sentence was devoted to the memory of John Ritter, and any proceeds will be donated to his favorite charity.

Eventually Rock Star greeted me the happy news that his sister loved the package. And that was all I ever heard on the subject, because you know it's not like she would call or write back or anything. I mean, like you know, why would she do that?

So, in the end, the most original idea to snare a girl that has been set forth since the beginning of time failed miserably. I bet Michael Douglas didn't have it this tough.