I am what I imagine myself to be.
As I get older I start to wonder if this acting thing is ever going to happen for me. What if it never works out? What if I’m stuck in an office for the rest of my life in a 9 to 5 job?
All I can do is keep moving foward, stay focused and stay driven.
“When I was young I thought of growing old, of what my life would mean to me. Would I have followed down my chosen road, or only wished what I could be. Kyrie eleison…” -Mr. Mister, Kyrie
2 CommentsMy trainer KILLED me last night. According to him, he’s trying to get my strength back from my short absence from training and eating bad. We just worked on chest/tricep exercises on Sat and last night we hit my chest and biceps hard. We started with 20min of cardio on the bike then moved to a couple warm-up exercises on the machines doing partial reps. Then we moved downstairs to the smith machine to do a couple sets of moderately heavy shoulder presses, then a couple sets of shoulder shrugs, then a couple sets of olympic bar partial bicep curls, then partial reps on chest benching 225lbs, then a couple sets of incline free-weight presses super-setting with lateral shoulder raises, back to incline presses — then my chest muscles gave out and my trainer caught the dumbbell before it crashed onto my collar bone.
Afterwards my trainer was nice enough to give me some Cytogainer with ice. I’ve also started taking creatine again to increase strength. Right now I’m trying out the Russian Red Creatine Actijubes. The trainer has also suggested that I try Animal Test which is a soon to be illegal pro-hormone (aka steroids) supplement. I don’t think I’m gonna touch the pro-hormones although they do work and are tempting. Instead I’ll rely on a clean diet, protein powder, a good multi-vitamin and some creatine.
BTW Congrats to my brother who got accepted into the prestigious Washington University masters program!!!
0 CommentsEarlier this evening I thought I lost all my entries for this blog and my wife’s blog. My wife had encountered an error when publishing an entry and the system was showing there were no entries in both blogs. Turns out that one of the database tables got corrupted. After a bunch of Google searches and reading documentation on mySQL, an hour later I learned about this handy little mySQL command “REPAIR TABLE” and now everything is running again (and archived for safe keeping)!
0 CommentsYesterday I received my copy of The Wild Divine computer game complete with my very own biofeedback unit. After going through a very lengthy 1.5GB install process I hooked up the biofeedback device and started the game. The game itself is very heavy on the mythical new age side which I definitely could have done without but the “gameplay” is very fun. I actually didn’t have many problems completing the first seven “games”. It is actually very cool to know that you are controlling the game with your mind and body. I felt like I was in Jedi training (yes, deep down I’m still a geek). Some of the things I accomplished in the game so far are: juggling balls by elevating my energy, lighting a fire by breathing and relaxing, stacking a bunch of rocks on top of each other by maintaining focus and relaxation for a elongated period of time and levitating a ball by relaxing.
I know this whole thing sounds wierd but it works. The basic premise is simple. The biofeedback unit tracks your heartbeat and electric activity through your skin and then interfaces with the game to give you visual and audio responses. The game teaches you different breathing and meditation principals derived from yoga and other similar eastern practices. I bought this game specifically for this reason. I feel it will help me in my acting and performances by teaching me how to focus and relax and make me less self conscious. Maybe if I’m able to master the game, I will start to be able to move things with my mind in real life. Or maybe I’ll realize that we are all just trapped in The Matrix and I can control this reality with my mind.
… [ long pause ] …
On another note, seeing John Cho plastered all over the place in the marketing campaign for his movie, “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” is a good reminder for me to get my act together and get my own acting career going.
0 CommentsTonight Heather and I went out with some friends that were visiting from out of town. It was nice to take a break from our usual hectic schedule and have some fun. Our first stop this evening was El Cholo where we ate really good Mexican food (A “Taste of History” w/ a green corn tamale - yummy!) and had a couple of margaritas. Then we headed down to the beach and walked along the sidewalk on the cliff that overlooks the ocean. We strolled down to the Santa Monica pier, grabbed some churros and ice cream then went down to the beach to put our feet in the water. On our way back we were stalked by some wierd musician who we just ignored. It was a beautiful night to be walking near the ocean.
0 CommentsIt’s been a couple days since I’ve made an entry in this blog. Like usual I’ve been busy.
It was wierd not having to get up and go to acting class on Sat. I found myself looking at the clock periodically for half the day saying, “I’d still be in class right now”. I miss everyone already. So instead of class on Sat, Heather and I went to Home Depot to pickup more paint samples for the house exterior and also pickup a new water dispensor for our bottled water. As we left we passed by a hot dog stand and the smell was to good to resist so Heather and I shared a jumbo hotdog w/ saurkraut, mustard, and ketchup. For some reason this made me think of a country fair so I told Heather that we should go to the country fair in Indiana sometime. Turns out, the fair just started but it would be too expensive to fly last minute so we’ll wait to visit the country fair next year.
I also started training again with the trainer over the weekend. He totally killed my chest and arms. He pushed me through set after set using moderate weights and different exercises with very little rest in-between. At one point I thought I might hurl. Now that’s an intense workout, although the trainer said that I still need to kick it up another notch and handle more weight.
I recently put together a list of things I feel are the next steps to my development as an actor and my career. On the top of my list is conquering my hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating) problem I sometimes have related to anxiety. Next, is the audition technique class (taught at the Joanne Baron/DW Brown studio) which I have already signed up for. Then I also need to practice emotional preparations which is very important since this will help set me apart from most of the competition. As for my “career” I’m going to start submitting myself to projects in Backstage West, Ross Reports, and start networking more. Then I need to start trying to MAKE MY OWN MOVIE!
1 CommentJuliette Lewis spoke last night. I really respect her work and her talent, but she wasn’t a very good speaker. She was very scattered, uneasy and easily distracted. But, she did come through with some good pieces of advice relating to her experiences growing up and working in Hollywood. The other guest speaker was Grant Curtis, one of the producers of Spider-Man 2 and the executive producer for Spider-Man 3. He was very down to earth and had a lot of good things to say about actors and the profession of acting.
Overall it was fun to be able to sit with all my classmates and friends knowing that we had accomplished a lot over the last two years and now we had the tools to be able to create great art on stage, TV and film.
0 CommentsI just got a phone call two hours ago about a commercial audition today for Mastercard. I was told I would be a spa employee and dress in white. Since I’m at my job, I didn’t really have time to change wardrobe so I just went as is. Luckily the casting studio for this audition was just a couple minutes away.
When I arrived I signed in, filled out the paperwork, got my polaroid taken, then was immediately called in as part of a group. After the explanation of what the casting director wanted to see we did our thing and was out of there in under 10min.
I love these easy auditions. In and out.
I hope I get a callback…
0 CommentsLast night I was at the acting studio from 5pm-2am. Of course, during class Tom was looking to us to create magic on-stage so he could give his stamp of approval and declare our work finished - at least for this part of our training. There was definitely a different energy in the room because everyone knew that this was our last class. As a result, all the performances were inspired, energetic and taken to new levels. It was a very fun night to perform and watch all my friends perform one last time for class. There were a lot of laughs, a lot of high-fives, a lot of support. It was great.
After class had finished we all sat in a circle and spent the next few hours just sharing what the training has meant to us, our various trials, triumphs and our gratitude to our very inspiring teacher Tom.
[gratuitous emoting starts here...]
This two year program has definitely been life-changing both personally and professionally all because of the great teaching of Tom and Elaine (acknowledging Mary as well). During this two year period I have gained great knowledge, skills, confidence and friends. Like I mentioned last night in class, I feel like I have been able to watch and participate in one of the greatest shows I have ever seen. Every single person in class has inspired me with their kindness, their talent, their effort, their transformation and their dedication. I especially have fondness for Ben, Angela and Kristina who have been on the journey with me since first year training. It’s been incredibly awesome to watch you guys grow and become the actors you are now and see the potential of everything you could be. I have a lot of great memories and will always laugh remembering some of the crazy performances we all had.
And Ben, you the man. You have a big heart, you are an inspiration, and you deserve it all. We had a lot of good times, good laughs in class. Congrats on being the valedictorian. I look forward to your speech at graduation. I hope we never lose touch.
Ultimately, I can’t forget my beautifully inspirational wife, Heather who pushed me to continue my training and bought me the classes for my birthday. You mean everything to me. I love you always. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without you and I continue to strive to be a better man because of you. Thank you for your love, support and for believing in me.
0 CommentsI had intentions of going to the gym tonight, but instead I decided to stay home and take care of a few things. Tomorrow will be the last class in my two year acting program and Thursday is graduation. Now it’s time to put together a game plan on how I’m gonna actually make a career out of acting. In the mean time, I have to assemble more cleaning gadgets to help with the process of cleaning up after all our animals.
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