This past Saturday I had the pleasure of working on a short film. Not only was the production a blast but I also got to work and act with two of my closest friends in the world, Mitch Wilhelmsen and Kurtis Bedford. Anytime you get to work on set with friends it's a very cool and unique experience. Side Note: If you're wondering about the image to the left it was made by Kurtis. He is the world's biggest Oingo Boingo fan...yeah I didn't even know you could put those words together in a sentence either. He has badgered me for the past two years that I need to listen to them and he will make me a compilation CD entitled "The Boingo-cation of John Keating". This year for my birthday he made good on his threat. I'm not sure where the hell he got the picture though...Amber sent it to him. There have been many times in my life where I have wanted to gouge my eyes out so it could have been from anywhere. Anyways, Kurtis was smart in putting the only two songs I was familiar with ('Dead Man's Party' and 'Weird Science') on seperate CDs (this is a two disc set) because if they were both on one, I would probably just listen to that CD and the other one would never see the light of day.
I've ripped them onto my iPod and have, to this date, only listened to 'Dead Man's Party' and 'Weird Science'.
But I digress...
As the story goes, Kurtis plays a dude who is in his thrties and still lives with his parents. He is sent on a quest by his mom and in the process comes to an epiphany about where his life is at and decides to make drastic changes. The director was looking for actors to play childhood friends who represent the path his life could have taken if he applied himself. The coolest thing for me was I didn't even have to audition for the part. I got it based off her seeing my reel...so that's always nice.
The shoot was a blast and it was so much fun working with them. Hopefully the first of many times my friends and I will be working together.
I've been working on 60 Minute Broadway a lot this past week and it got me thinking in a wrasslin' move. So here are my top ten things that I learned from my years watching wrestling.
10) When the good guy is going for a tag in a tag team match, the referee will always have his back turned at the moment of the tag, negating said tag.
9) Conversely, if a bad guy tags out behind the referee's back, all they need to do is slap their hands together loudly to sound like a tag and that will pretty much do.
8) You can commit heinous acts of violence on a person without risking jail time as long as the weapon is a steel chair or ringside table.
7) If someone is referred to as a "wily veteran" they are going to lose the match.
6) If an announcer counts along with the referee's pin count and says "that's gotta be all", it never is.
5) Missing a top rope move hurts a lot more than landing the move on an opponent, even though you are still falling with the same velocity and landing on the same mat. When the opponent moves, it's just...different.
4) When Hogan starts "hulking up" you will be powerless to resist. You will keep punching him even though it has no effect and finally run straight into his boot. (I always wanted to see someone just kick him in the nuts when he started that whole routine. Hulk up THIS!)
3) If you are Samoan your head will be really hard and the headbutt will be your finisher. Just accept it.
2) You can stab someone in the back with the camera in full view, free of fear that the wrestler will actually go back and look at the tape or just ask someone who was watching the show what happened.
And the number 1 thing I learned from watching pro wrestling.....
1) You can get that big naturally. No seriously. Really.
For those into Astrology and that sort thing, Mercury Retrograde is not a phrase you enjoy hearing. It usually is a precursor to a lot of stuff going wrong. Right now, we are in a Mercury Rising period and it was quite evident this past Saturday night.
Amber had been planning a big birthday extravaganza for yours truly for quite sometime. She finagled some email addresses for a lot of my close friends and set up a party at the Orchid Karaoke Club in Korea-town. If you've ever seen Lost in Translation you have an idea of what the Orchid is like. A series of rooms of varying sizes and capacities, all with big screens and microphones (and thankfully soundproofed). You also have a "service" button to call the wait staff in to order drinks and food. A very cool idea and lots of fun.
The night started off on an odd tone as Amber and I dropped my roommate Tim to get his car from the repair shop. She and I left to head to the club and we got slammed in parking lot-like traffic on the 101. It took us about an hour to make it to the club (maybe a 15-20 minute drive otherwise) and we find out that they have no reservation. Amber had booked the reservation two weeks ago and left her credit card, so she was understandably not happy. It reminded me of that Seinfeld epsiode where Jerry made a reservation for a rental car but they told him that they ran out of cars. "That's what a reservation is for! You're very good at taking the reservation...no problems there. You're just not good at holding the reservation...which is really the entire point of the reservation."
We meet up with Jeff, Mitch, Jon and Christine and find that they have a room for us and there should be no problem. When we get to the room, Amber's friens Jen and Alex are there waiting for us. All seems right with the world, until...
...we find out that there is only one cook for the evening. An evening filled with about 100 people upstairs in the karaoke not to mention the 300 or more Korean baseball fans watching the big game against Japan downstairs. One cook. Orders were taking 2 hours or more to be completed. Insanity.
And amidst all of the chaos, inconveniences and ridiculousness...we all had an amazing time. There were about 15 of my closest friends and I was so thrilled to be able to hang out, drink, laugh and sing with them all.
It was a huge rite of passage for me as a situation like that, in the past, would have put me in a downward spiral for the entire evening and my mood would have wrecked everyone's time. Not that night. All of the stress was put aside and we all just had a great time. Amber was so excited to do this party and it all worked out perfectly. She rocks. She's an amazing part of my life.
So that was my Saturday night and my own experiences with Mercury Retrograde. I survived and thrived and had a great evening with my friends. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday.
..but man, I'm really itching to make a "moon in Uranus" joke here somewhere. I guess I really have grown up.
As many people who read this site know, I've been studying acting with Dee Wallace (Stone) for the past three years. She is probably best known for her role in E.T. as well as Cujo, The Frightners and The Howling. In addition to the impressive film resume she is also starring in the ABC comedy Sons & Daughters on Tuesday nights at 9:00.
The show is considered a "hybrid" show as it blends both the scripted sitcom and improv into one seamless and very funny show. It's like "All in the Family" meets "Curb Your Enthusiasm". Dee is wonderful in this show and I'm SO happy to see her back in the mainstream and back in the "big time". She deserves all of the success she can get.
The show also stars creator Fred Goss and Max Gail (Wojo from "Barney Miller") and the chemistry between the cast is some of the best I've seen on a TV show. It's definitely worth a look if you like quality comedy that doesn't rely on "gags". It has a lot of heart and things don't always go down the expected, cliched road as they can in most sitcoms.
Check it out and I promise you won't be disappointed. If you like the show, please take a moment and drop a line to ABC to let them know as the show is getting hit in the ratings by the American Idol juggernaut.
The address is:
Sons & Daughters ABC Audience Relations 500 S. Buena Vista Street Burbank, CA 91521-4551
Drop a line and keep a quality comedy on the air (plus I stand a reeaaalllyyy good shot at getting on this show someday so help a brother out!! :)
So today is my birthday and I have mixed feelings. On one hand there is the standard "I can't believe I'm [insert age here]...when I was little, people that were [insert age here] seemed so old". So there's that.
There's also another part of me that feels much more confident and secure in who I am and where I'm trying to get to. I feel more focused and, despite mis-steps of doubt here and there, truly believe that this is going to be a huge year. I can feel the pieces falling into place and stuff shifting around me. It will be interesting to see how things turn out.
In the meantime, I'm going to get drunk, eat and celebrate my birthday with loved ones and friends (pretty much all the same). That sounds like a good plan.
In addition, I think I've created a monster with the Monkey Wisdom..a monster in the form of my Mom. She's addicted to it and I keep getting random messages from Monkey's in my mailbox each morning. She's stealing my schtick!! Ah well...at least I know were I get my random sense of humor from.
Last weekend was quite crazy. I'm not sure exactly how much I'm supposed to reveal so I will try to speak about it in the most vague of terms...all names have been changed to protect the innocent.
A friend of mine IMs me last week asking if I wanted to be her boyfriend's "friend" on their reality show for a major cable network. My first response was: "what the hell are you talking about?" That same sentence also happened to be my second through eleventh response as well. I seemed to just keep repeating the sentence over and over.
Apparently, they (unbeknownst to me or anyone else) are doing a reality television show pilot, the details of which I'm not really allowed to divulge. I was afraid I was going to be interviewed as one of those inserts that goof on the dude, "oh he is a slob" or "he's still obsessed with video games at his age" or "he needs to commit". Since all three of those terms could loosely (and not so loosely) be used to describe myself, I would have had to decline as to not appear too hypocritical.
Luckily, they just wanted to film a poker game and asked to use my house and table. I had no problem with it as I'm always looking for an excuse to play. I had to sign a release and we had a very small camera come over and film an hour or so. The thing was they supplied food and drink which was very cool. Apparently they thought "poker game" meant seven football teams as there were 8 gigantic pizzas, three cases of beer and enough soda to make all my teeth fall out.
The game was a lot of fun and we had really fast blind rounds. The title of this piece comes from the cleanup as not even a 1/4 of the pizzas were consumed and our recycling bin was packed. So we had to take the pizzas out of the cardboard to break it down and dump them in a Hefty (tm) bag. The thing weighed about 8 pounds! I was like Santa Claus on my way to the dumpster, only instead of coal for all the bad boys and girls, it was day old cold pizza in their stockings!
So therein lies the tale of the bag o' pizza. I told you it wouldn't nearly live up to the hype.
Sorry for not posting, it's been a crazy week. I still have the tale of "bag o' pizza" and the reality show nuttiness from last weekend to share. Sadly, it probably won't live up to the hype.
For now though, I leave you with the newest feature on my site: Words of Monkey Wisdom!!
