In Greencastle the film I made a cameo, playing the character, Roy Baker. Roy is the District Dean of a correspondence school and gives an inspirational graduation speech to the graduating class of March. The production team released stills, which are photos from the film. Check out Greencastle on Facebook.
“Greencastle” is an upcoming independent film that I am fortunate to be a part of. I make a small cameo as District Dean Roy Baker giving a commencement speech for a correspondence school graduation.
Created by my long time comedy writing partner, Koran Dunbar, “Greencastle” is a film about a single father who works at a small-town pet store in Greencastle, PA. Poitier struggles against self-doubt and an unclear life direction while trying to raise his young son. In the midst of his “quarter-life crisis” enters Leslie, an attractive woman running from an ugly past. Fate brings them together, but Poitier discovers that opportunities only come to those who take chances, and he must come to terms with his own past before he can embrace his future with confidence.
The crew behind “Greencastle” filmed the movie over the summer of 2011 and the footage turned out great as you can see in the trailer above. They want to take “Greencastle” to a wider audience and looking to use a website called Kickstarter to do so. Have you heard of Kickstarter? Kickstarter is a website where people can post their project and raise funding by offering incentives such as autographed scripts or items related to the output of the project.
“Greencastle” is already submitted to film festivals like SXSW and I would love to see where this project could go with everyone’s help. Check out the Kickstarter for “Greencastle” and see if this is something that you are interested in supporting… Thanks!
Have you ever done something that you completely forgotten about only to see it on the web years later? I guess the whole current generation of noobs will know what I mean when they are sitting in their job interview, and the interviewer asks them about that YouTube video…
If you ever go to a gaming convention you will notice all of the ironic t-shirts everyone wears. For example, the overweight guy wearing a small Supperman t-shirt. Each year more and more t-shirt vendors invade the exhibit hall at Gen Con.
If you know me, you know that I just had to create a bunch of sarcastic, novelty shirts. I just can’t not do it. So in 2006 I made up a bunch of shirts. I sold a few, mostly it was a waste of time. A few survived and I gave them out to my friends for Gen Con 2006. One in particular was a shirt for The Dungeoneering Dad that read, “My other shirt is a v-neck”. Looks like TDD gave it away…
Today, I find that exact shirt on a website called “toomanytshirts.com” – a site where “a random dude from Pittsburgh” wears and photographs a different t-shirt every day.
That was a pleasant surprise to see the old shirt still making its rounds with my trademark bar code on the sleeve. I completely forgot about the two weeks I was “T-shirt Hans”.
Here are some of my other more popular (less popular) t-shirt slogans:
When I get ready to go out, I check to make sure I have the essentials:
For almost 4 years, I have been carrying around a “Three of Diamonds” in my front pocket. I wanted to pull off a surprising magic trick using this precise card. The trick involves asking somebody to pick a card from an invisible deck of cards. I would say, “Pick any card,” as I fanned out a pretend deck of cards. My hope was that the trickee would pick the “Three of Diamonds”. If I could produce the card they were thinking of, they would be amazed – they would have to be.
I chose the “Three of Diamonds” for one main reason – if someone picked it out of the blue, it would be unlikely that I was prepared for that exact card. “Ace of Spades” of “Queen of Diamonds” would be obvious, but a three – none one would pick that one.
My thoughts were right, no one picked the three of diamonds for a long time, 4 years or so. I had to play it off as a joke when they said some card other than the 3 of D. Almost half the time someone picked an Ace of something.
But patience paid off. I was at a party recently and I got to try my trick again. I saw a group of ladies that were friends of friends that I had met a long time ago. I started up a conversation. I wanted to say the words “Three” and “Diamonds” in the chit-chat. After so many wrong picks, I thought that I would start stacking the deck so to speak. I had to be subtle though.
“Alright, I want you to think of any card…” I waved my hands to mock a magician and got a smile. “Pick any card… Do you have the card?… Can you see it?” She said, “Yes!?”
I dug out the hidden “Three of Diamonds” and said, “Is this your card?” She opened her eyes and reacted with total amazement. She immediately wanted to know how I just did that. “It’s magic. I am magical.”
I have since retired the trick. I didn’t want to be that guy that does magic tricks at parties. How annoying is that guy?
Everything is going digital. I know, a profound statement, but the consequences of “digital” are a future riddled with software bugs, failures, and EMP induced outages (the EPT EMP to be exact). We rely on technology to get us through our days and we will be faced with crashes when we need technology the most.
“Clearblue” has released a digital version of their pregnancy tester. My girlfriend, completely fictional to make a point, and I was discussing the ramifications of a digital pregnancy test. One day the test will be dependent on an Operating System to drive the user interface. It might even have Windows on it.
In your critical moment, of whether you will be with a child or have more time to yourself – unshackled by a disappointing version of yourself, the pregnancy tester will crash giving you an ambiguous result.
Take a glimpse of the future. You have been warned.
I travel a lot and find myself watching people at the airport to pass the time waiting for flights to depart. I watch them as they walk by Cinnabon and pretend not to want one. I am fascinated by how people behave – whether it’s good behavior or bad, I still find it interesting. After a canceled flight and Chicago weather, I finally made it back to Pittsburgh International Airport. If you have never been, it’s like a mall that opened up an airport. I was waiting for my luggage to come from the airplane. We are all standing around a belt that turns in one direction and carries our luggage from a down ramp. The first thing I noticed is that half of the crowd was on one side of the ramp and the other half was on the other side. So, half of these people are going to be waiting the entire trip around for their luggage and the other half are going to get their luggage first. A lady in her late forties and a scarf had an entirely different agenda. She was going to stand clear and wait for it to start turning and sidle up and grab her bag. I could see the anticipation well up as the horn and spinning light announced our bags were coming. She got up and cut right to the side the belt was turning ignoring the people who were there first. My page came out soon, but I wanted to see how it played out. The lady grew impatient and sighed with the exaggeration of a stage actor. I waited 10 minutes and nearly all of the bags were taken minus a few stragglers – a taped up duffel and flower print roller were the only ones left spinning. She stormed into the bag claim office. I took my flower print roller and headed to the parking shuttle. On the ride to my car, I thought about the events of the lady and her missing bag. She probably asked for it and had it coming.
I venture from the lair to meet up with the opposite sex from time to time. I had a date recently that turned from a romantic encounter to awkward tech support. Our evening started at an exotic and unique restaurant that just opened in my home town called Applebees. I had the riblets and Jenny had a couple of veggie wraps. I was killed by chocolate and she had a Weight Watchers dessert that only cost 4 points on her daily allowance. I have known her for a while and was attempting to make this transition into dating. I was going strong. We shared our dreams and passions. She wanted to be a lifeguard. I wanted to level up my RPG character. She has a cat. I have my mom. It was a bonafide match as she uncomfortably laughed at some of my puns. The awkwardness reached a crescendo when we talked about our favorite books. I like William Gibson. She likes road signs. After dinner, we had drinks at a local establishment where we discussed philosophy, economics, and the “flight” of humankind as she put it.
To my surprise, she asked me back to her place for a drink. I am sure I had something on my schedule, but I went anyway.
She opened a bottle of wine, put on the new Mariah Carey, and she sat beside me on her couch. We got closer as our conversation got deeper and the alcohol took its desired effect on me.
“I want to ask you something,” Jenny said.
My anticipation grew.
“My wireless router is dropping my connection from time to time… would you take a look?”
If this situation was in a movie, the song “Touch My Body” would have come to a screeching stop.
I fixed her router. Well, I did fix her router even though this is where I didn’t want the night to end, but I made her WEP key easy to guess. It wouldn’t take Tommy Tutone to be able to figure out Jenny’s password. There probably won’t be a next time, but if she needs help with something she is going to have to submit a trouble ticket like everyone else.
I don’t usually have time for video games, but I do have time to pretend to play video games and then write about pretending to play video games. Does three hours a day of online poker, chess, and bridge count as video games?
One day I had the idea to poke fun at Guitar Hero and Rock Band by claiming to play these games constantly, although I have one friend who got completely obsessed with the game. He’s so into the virtual rockstar mindset that he has no more bathroom sinks on the wall and every time he asks you a question, he yells, “I can’t hear you.”
I started this flight of fantasy trying out my newly written jokes about my Guitar Hero mastery and obsession with my friends and then on my newsletter.
The responses poured in. People love to the play rockstar games and were glad that I joined in. Everyone missed my sarcasm and believed my lies about playing the game. I had a problem as everyone I saw thought to ask me about the modes and songs – everything I had no idea about.
My friends pulled me into a basement and set up the Rock Band equipment: a 5-button guitar, a 5-button bass guitar, a 5-button drum kit, and a microphone. We were complete – the band was all here with an orgy of adoring virtual fans.
In one night, I went from Guitar Zero to Guitar Hero. On “Easy Mode” the game is pretty easy. Insightful as that may be, the more advanced modes are impossible to me and I have an appreciation for those that can orchestrate the 5-buttons to create virtual portions of a rock song.
“I can’t hear you, London!”
