Okay, the guys over at Stray Dog, must have been some editing fools because that Krystal spot I shot is already on YouTube and I’ve had several people tell me that they’ve seen it on the air.
So, here it is! Look for the construction worker toward the beginning with the red hardhat and sunglasses in the back of the truck. Ton of fun to shoot!
I know what you are thinking. “Why is he posting on Father’s Day?” Answer: Because, I can!
Anyway, it’s been a pretty good weekend thus far. We had a nice, relaxing day and a pleasant dinner with the in-laws. Then, we finished Season One of The Tudors.
Today has been pretty lazy so far, too. Slept late (at least, as late as the kids would let us - in this case 7:45a), ate breakfast, read some in my book, and sat down at the computer for a little while before heading over to the in-laws again for the “official” festivities of the day.
I haven’t had a chance to talk about it yet, but I had a great time on the shoot last Thursday. The highlight of the day had to be meeting Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Not kidding. He was there on the shoot. Dennis Boggs is a nice a guy as you’d ever want to meet and is very enthusiastic and passionate about his duty as a Lincoln impersonator. He shared some snippets of his various programs as he presents them all over the Southeast. I don’t want to take away from some of the other’s I met on the set. Tony Morton and I had a great conversation about the world of teaching theatre both to high school students and college students. I also got to know Amanda Bailey, host of Inside Music Row. She’s a hoot and a real joy to work with.
I’ll post the video of the spot as soon as I get it in my hands!
So, today is the day apparently.
I’m taking just a moment to let you know that I just booked a commercial for Krystals. It’s a regional buyout so, chances are, you’ll see it. From what I know of it so far, it feels like a football season-type commercial. For now, I’m frantically getting ready for my wardrobe fitting which is in about two hours yet nearly an hour’s drive away. Oh yeah, and scrambling for daycare for the shoot tomorrow.
Film at 11…
…a year makes.
So, it’s been well over a year since I’ve posted anything new to this website. I promise it’s not because of a lack of anything to say. It’s just been that kind of year. Still, I’m again inspired by Sarah who seems to always take the time to post to her blog (which runs on the same software as mine) and always has something witty and clever to say.
Here are some of the highlights:
There’s even more crap that I won’t get into because I don’t want this to become a pity party. Suffice it to say that I’ve been a little too tied up to actually sit down behind the keyboard to write something that wasn’t for school or the show.
I’m not going to promise I’ll write more here, but I’ll certainly be posting updates on my work as well as a few belated pictures of the family and kids.
Thanks for still reading the site.
A couple of months ago, I was about to shoot a new commercial when I got an e-mail from the director, Alan McKenna of CJ Advertising, asking if I had any kids. It turns out they were looking for someone to play my child in the commercial. To make a long story short, they decided on Morgan!
Without further delay, here is the finished product. If you are reading this on the feed, you might want to head over to the website to see the other two videos which are attached as well. One of them is an outtakes reel!
Dad Spot [0:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (628) Composite Spot [0:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (392) Outtakes! [2:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (397)So, we’re at the beach. Bekah and I hadn’t been on vacation since before w=
e left Texas and this year we were able to squeeze it in. We let Morgan pi=
ck the location and she selected ”the beach.”
By the way, we selected an awesome spot in Seacrest, FL.
Going to the beach with kids is incredible. Thankfully, I was able to capt=
ure the very first moment they saw the ocean on video. It was priceless. =
Morgan has been counting down the days to this moment for nearly two weeks =
and the payoff was worth the wait. =20
We’ve been here several days and have settled into a pretty good routine. =
We get up every morning (which still happens at around 6:30 or 7:00 am), ea=
t breakfast, slather everybody down with sunscreen, put on our bathing suit=
s and head out to the beach. We stay there for several hours, try to keep =
Ian from running headfirst into the Gulf of Mexico, build a couple of sandc=
astles (at least until Ian finds them and smashes them with his feet - we’v=
e actually only completed one castle that survived), eat a snack, walk on t=
he beach to find treasure (seashells in Morganspeak), then head back for lu=
nch and heavy naps.
Rinse and repeat for the afternoon. =20
Tonight, however, we took Morgan out for a walk on the beach by herself (Gr=
anna stayed in the cottage with Ian). I wasn’t ready for the sentimental o=
verload that caused. =20
I’m more of a hiking/camping kind of guy. Even as a teenager, I preferred =
going to the mountains to going to the beach. I don’t like sand and don’t =
like to swim in water where other things are also swimming with me (that is=
other non-human things). However, watching Mommy and Morgan walking on th=
e beach just before sunset looking for seashells was one of my happiest mom=
ents as a father. I got some of it on video, but the rest of it I just too=
k in by myself and enjoyed while it was happening. =20
There was an unceasing sense of awe and wonder on Morgan’s face. With ever=
y step she discovered something new. Every seashell she found was more bea=
utiful than the last. It was wonderful.
I think we’ve started a new family tradition, sand or not. =
So, my laptop had been limping along for about the past year. First of all, the battery died. In order to use my laptop, I had to have it plugged in to an outlet, which of course, made it nothing more than a desktop computer on a diet. In recent months, one of the drives (the DVD, I hoped) started making funny noises. Well, not so much funny as downright haunting. If you accidentally closed the lid to hard or bumped the table where it was resting, the drives would start screaming; sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes, it wouldn’t stop until you forced a shutdown of the system and reboot. It served me well for the better part of five years. However, toward the end of last week, it started acting…well…funny.
The worst part is that I am leaving tomorrow to head to Atlanta for the Southeastern Theatre Conference where I’m going to be leading several workshops for which I have spent the better part of 6 months prepping PowerPoint presentations. In order to present these, I must have a laptop!! I could tell it wasn’t going to make it through the weekend.
Those of you who know me as a gadget freak will laugh at this statement, but I was literally making myself sick with images of standing up in front of a group of workshops attendees with a dead laptop and no way to present.
So, I bit the bullet and got a new laptop. This is not something I was planning on doing, but I could not get to Atlanta and be left in the lurch. It didn’t occur to me that a new laptop would come with Windows Vista loaded on it. This became an adventure that would last the entire weekend. I have just now finished getting all of my software loaded on the new computer and transferring files. You’d think that Windows projects would network, easily together, wouldn’t you? Oh no. Getting my old XP machine to even recognize my shiny new Vista machine, involved nearly two solid hours of tracking down an obscure software patch that Microsoft is not advertising anywhere. You gotta love it…
Still, the search, daunting though it was, was okay. I like “tinkering under the hood” of my computers. I know just enough to make me dangerous, but I still enjoy it. That’s why I decided to opt for another Windows machine rather than taking the plunge into MacLand. I’ve played around on some friends’ Macs lately, and I’m just not impressed enough to make the switch. I know Windows (even with the curve of learning where everything is in Vista).
I’m not convinced that Windows Vista is a step in the right direction. Sure it’s pretty, but it’s just weird.
We found Sarah’s owner…
It was a rough night for a certain little girl in our household. However, it seems that Sarah (or whatever her real name is) is a special little dog for the little boy who lost her. Just to make sure that we weren’t too upset about losing her, God made sure that the story of the person who lost her was a doozy. It seems that the little boy who lost her was involved in a car accident recently (how recently, I don’t know) and was paralyzed from the waist down. To make matters worse, he also lost his father in the accident.
I promised Morgan that, in the event that we should find “Sarah’s” owner, we would definitely get another dog. So, I had to explain why Sarah wasn’t here anymore and how important it was that she got back to her rightful owner. This is the stuff they don’t put in the Great Big Book of Good Parenting.
Come to think of it, there’s not a lot of stuff in that book at all…
So, yesterday afternoon I was picking up the kids and my father-in-law informs me that they have “acquired” another dog. It seems that there was a stray Yorkie running around their neighborhood. He went from house to house asking if they knew where she had come from. No one had seen her, so I get a call from him asking if we wanted to take care of her. I agreed.
So, now we have a fully-grown Yorkie in the house (but even fully grown she comes up to my ankles). She’s already house-trained and walked into our home like she’d been living there for several years already. The look on her face seemed to say, “Did you rent out my room while I was gone or can I just move my stuff back in?”
When Bekah got home, the dog spent more than an hour sitting in her lap while they watched TV.
Oh yeah, I forgot the most important part, Morgan was fretting over what to name her. Morgan identified her as a “princess” (meaning “girl”), so she immediately went into her filing cabinet for “princess” names. “Anna” was the first one she came up with. I decided that name wasn’t the best idea since Morgan’s cousin’s name is Anna and I just thought that would be a little confusing down the line. So, Morgan finally settled on the name “Sarah,” which somehow seems to fit her personality. After all, our last dog’s name was “Emily.”
