Okay, so I finally got around to seeing my own commercial running on TV and I have to say, Gabe, you were right. The version that’s running on TV is slightly different from the ones that the agency sent me. The changes in the edit are miniscule, but if you are looking, they are there. Take a look for yourself…
Thanks to Melissa Wald for grabbing this cut of it via TiVo! (Unofficially speaking, I was on Oprah!)
My friends keep seeing my commercial run here in Tennessee. They (the advertisers) are literally saturating the market with it. I’m getting lots of screen time all of a sudden! It’s a great thing, but it’s led me to one conclusion.
I must lose weight and gain hair.
I’m okay with not being able to do the latter, believe it or not. I’m going to be one of those men who attaches their masculinity to their hair. I believe that Samson was the only one in history who had that little problem and look how he turned out. No, I refuse to fight that battle. My grandfather, who has been bald since I can remember, used to have a sign hanging on the wall that said, “God only created so many perfect heads. The rest he covered with hair!” These are now the words I live by. When the time comes, I will merely shave my head and be done with it.
Believe it or not, being back on a college campus with a horrible parking problem has helped tremendously with the former. See, when I get to campus every morning at 8am, I almost have my pick of the parking places (if, however, I am running late and get to campus between 8:05 and 8:10, I’m completely screwed and have to tie my truck to a hitching post and hope for the best). Once I stake my claim on a great parking place near my office, I’m able to freely roam about campus without any thoughts. And, since my office is on the extreme far edge of campus away from my classroom buildings, it means that my ass is walking a lot more than I used to. Which in turn, means that there’s suddenly a lot less of my ass to haul around campus.
Oh yeah, having an iPod helps, too.
By the way, I’m measuring my success in this weight loss endeavor by the only true measure - the size of the waist of my pants. When I started this semester, I was refusing to make the leap from a 40 to a 42 merely on principle. This morning, I’m pleased to say that I put on a pair of old 38’s and they fit without my having to suck in my gut at all.
Two years ago, my doctor put me on phentermine (I’m sure I’m spelling that wrong) which was one half of the notorious Phen-Fen combination. I’m just assuming that it was the okay half. I’m not going to lie. It was great. I dropped 30 pounds in about a month without having to change my diet or exercise. I just didn’t have an appetite any more. I thought I had finally found the magical solution. The problem is that those little pills cost money…which is something we didn’t have a great deal of at the time (and still don’t).
Not only that, but I felt like I was cheating somehow. And it was one thing to lose the weight, but it was another thing altogether to “get healthy.” I wanted to get healthy. And not just for me: I wanted to make sure I was going to be around for my kids for a long time.
So, getting back on a college campus has changed all that. I know that not everyone can get back on a college campus and some people are actually really okay with that. I do however, recommend that you include some way to force a little walking in your life. It does work.
So, Monday 9/11 marks a historical day in American history: My TN Lottery spot hits the air all across the state. It seems like there’s something else going on that day, but I just can’t remember what it is…
Anyway, I promised all of you a copy of it when I got it. Well, here it is. There are two versions of the spot on this podcast. I’m not sure how they will be rotated (if at all).
Thanks again to my agent, Josh, who is fantastic, Holly at FilmHouse, Director Bruce Van Dusen, and everyone at Dan Williams Music and Motion for making this one of the most pleasant days of work I’ve had in a long time.
Oh yeah, thanks to my fellow actor, Josh, for making me look good…
So, I just got back home from a weekend jaunt down to Atlanta for DragonCon 2006. This was my first year to go. I went down to participate as a staff member of Needcoffee.com. I sat in on two panel discussions and attended (and helped work) the Gonzo Film Festival. The latter was cool because we debuted a new episode of the Venture Bros.!
Anyway, the family didn’t go, so I had to take a picture to prove that I was a good boy the whole time. Thanks, Misty!
