Break a Leg

That's right! It's out! The title speaks right and true.

So far, we're ridiculously proud of this episode. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm going to talk in vague terms but -- we built a ramp (I'll let Justin write about that in the near future)! Not only did we build a ramp, but we paid an homage to one of my personal favorite films of all time. We'll let you figure out what movie, exactly, but I'll give you a hint and say that after I saw it I was pretty much convinced I was Peter Pan for at least a year or two afterward. I'm just saying.

Aside from that, a little fun insight on this episode:

--The cow scene was shot SUNDAY before we released it -- today. We searched desperately for cows until we found a ranch that let us film in front of it -- it ended up matching the location we needed EXACTLY and turned out to be one of my favorite scenes we've ever done. Marilyn (Cherry) is pure brilliance in it, and I can't stop saying, "Well because they're COWS, David!"

--We shot the opener (Chase and David discovering the town) twice. The first time was simpler and significantly more boring. The second time we improvised us walking through the woods (the dialogue, up until the zoom out of the town is all improvised) and did the dramatic pull-back shot that helped reveal the amazing town that we shot in. Which, once again, thanks to Guy Smith for letting us use it.

--The Tall Child Actor is Dashiell's(Crew Guy/Editor/Cinematographey/ALMOST EVERY EXTRA) brother. He's HUGE.

--The baby is named Ayla and is Marilyn's daughter. Remember when Cherry was pregnant in David's Bad Day? Well, Ayla's the product of that. Time flies, huh? She's also an amazing little actress and, if you watch closely, is the same baby who scared Chase at Burger King.

--No Drew Lannings were harmed in the filming of the ramp.

--We didn't sleep all night making this episode.

And that, as they say, is all.

Check out the episode on YouTube, if only to leave a quick comment so it bumps us up in the rotation. You can do that by clicking here.

Or, if you'd rather just stay on the site -- click episodes, watch the episode, and tell us what you think.

Thanks, guys! Enjoy!

-Yuri

Well, it's finally happened and it only took 38 and a half weeks. Maya Yaeli Baranovsky was born on August 11th,
immediately making me (Vlad) a daddy, and making Yuri a crazy-but-lovable motorcycle driving uncle with a poorly conceiled drinking problem. I'm glad to report that at 5 days old Maya's already attended a Break a Leg shoot -- where she showed her approval by falling asleep in her red, black, and white car seat.

Maya will be joining the child actors' guild just as soon as she can say "GFC," but in the mean time, here she is practicing her Wilhelm scream by looking at my face:

Apparently, I strike fear in the hearts of small children.

In other news, I remember sleep. I used to sleep once.

That is all--

Vlad

Editor's Note: This was supposed to be posted last, last thursday. Sorry, Drew!

---

I'm writing this from work because, well it's Thursday and I haven't written anything yet. I'm kind of under the gun here.

At my wife's suggestion I wrote a whole post about burritos. Luckily for all of you I developed some sanity before going too far with that, but I'll keep it in my back pocket for someday when I'm really desperate for ideas.

It's kind of ironic that, given how hard it is sometimes for me to come up with anything to write about week after week, I've been seriously toying (oxymoron?) with the idea of starting a podcast.

Now overall, starting a podcast is dead simple. You record something, somehow, then put it on the... web? Right. It's easy to get started, but I'm historically a starter.

You know how some people are non-starters? I'm a starter, i.e. a non-finisher. It's gotten so bad that within the last few years I'm such a non-finisher that I've almost flirted with the idea of becoming a non-starter altogether. "Close the loop" as they say in the boardrooms of America.

I've read David Allen's crap-tacular fiction piece "Getting Things Done" and cruised the websites that it's inspired. One of the few concepts that I've managed to take away from that is the "Someday" list. Mine is growing.

I do however want to move the "Start a Podcast" from "Someday" to "Today", which is fairly trivial to do. The problem is that I would like to be sure I do so in such a way that it doesn't move right out of "Today" and into "Yesterday". I want to be sure I've set myself up for success, as it were.

Sorry, sitting in this office just brings out the CEO Bingo in me.

My main concern obviously is with TIME. When the hell am I supposed to do this? I can barely scrape together 10 songs worth of a time to write a blog post, much less record and edit a podcast.

Then of course there's content. I'm leaving time out of the equation for now and focusing on what the hell I'm supposed to talk about. There are many facets to my life, including some never really discussed here (my day job, for one), so I've got several areas of interest I could ramble on about.

In other words, I can bore the shit out of you people six ways from Sunday.

Advice welcome.

Editor's Note: Sorry, I realize this isn't Wednesday, but due to the video being released late, Jennifer's blog was pushed forward and so was Jimmy's. Jimmy's will be up tomorrow.

Thanks!

-The Management

--

So...people want to hear about my feelings, eh?  I got a lot.  I got a lot of feelings.

Currently, I'm feeling tired.  It's tech week for Taming of the Shrew.  This means I wake up everyday around 6:30am  because my internal clock is whacked.  Then I lie there until about 7:25, at which point I fall asleep for 10 minutes.  Then I wake up again panicing that I've slept through my alarm again.  I lie there until 8:00 when my alarm goes off.  I then hit the snooze button and lay there for another 9 minutes.  Finally, I'll get up, grab the nearest clean thing to wear in reach, and stuble off to the bathroom for my daily ablutions.  I generally leave the house around 8:40, depending on how long I 1.) deign to just stand in the shower and let the water run over my head, or 2.) have to wait for the water to stablize at a temperature I am comfortable with bathing in.

I get to work around 8:50, and maybe get toast, coffee, and/or juice from the local cafe.  Then I sit there in front of my computer for about 8 hours trying to decifer customer requests and orders placed by coworkers in order to make some sort of art out of, usually, nothing but some vague notion of what the world is supposed to look like.

I break the monotony with several devices.  Break a Leg, reading email, playing Kingdom of Loathing, having lunch, quoting movies with coworkers, or just listening to my ipod turned way down through only one ear phone. 

Despite this riot of activity, I'm feeling pretty bored in my work.   I need to find something else to do.  But that takes time: something I currently have very little of. 

Then, after I'm done I drive for anywhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour 15 minutes to get to the theater.  Now, let me just say that I don't really enjoy driving.  First: you're just sitting there for as long as it takes you to get wherever you're going.  That's boring.  In traffic, it's not just boring, it's mind-numbing.  Next, you could die at any time due to somebody else not paying attention, or you not paying attention, or some mechanical malfunction, or any number of other reasons.  That's scary.  Thirdly, there's all these laws you're supposed to follow.  Those suck.  Ok sure, they are supposed to reduce the chance of the afore-mentioned accidents from happening, but some of them are just dumb.  Like carpool lanes.  I know these are supposed to encourage more people to carpool, but all they really doing is creating one less lane for all the other people to use.  I think if we're going to have that lane, then the cars with two or more passengers should HAVE to use it.  But no, for the most part, I see this lane empty, open, and inviting.  Hey, if it isn't being put to the use it's intended for, why can't I help relieve the traffic situation by getting out of other people's ways?  Anyway, the sooner they create matter transportation devices, the better I say.  Beam me up, Scotty.

Finally, I get to the theater, get into costume, and go do a run of the show.  By the time I'm done prancing around like an idot and have my costume off, it's about 10pm.  Now I have to drive BACK for 45 minutes and try not to speed or pass slower cars on the shoulder when they cut me off and the road suddenly changes from 3 lanes to 2 and the state trooper who just pulled me over asks "What's the rush?"  What's the rush? I'm fucking tired is what the rush is.  I want to go home so I can log onto WoW and check my mail before maybe getting in a chapter of reading so my brain can slow down enough to fall asleep so I can maybe get 6 hours of sleep before I have to start all over again. 

So, I'm tired.  Not as tired as the BaL guys are on a more regular basis, I'm sure, but I generally need to get a lot of sleep before I feel rested, and that just ain't happening.  And I'm frustrated because I don't want to work in retail/customer service, but I'm too lazy to get my ass in gear and start submitting head shots, resumes, and voice over demos to every body under the sun on the off chance that they might see my stuff and think "Hey, he's just what we're looking for.  Bring him in!  Sign him up!  Give him some money!"  Because there are a thousand guys out there just like me (well, nobody is quite like me)doing exactly the same thing, and my room's a mess, and my car is a POS, and I'm going bald, and I haven't gotten laid in quite some time, and I could be in better shape, and I think I have a cavity, and things could be a whole hell of a lot better. 

But hey, when couldn't they?  I try to take delight in the little things, always find a reason to laugh, and remember that somewhere out there is a cold beer with my name on it.

Femke, I'll try and get you some more suffering later...maybe the girl who broke my hearth and then became a porn star; or what it's like not being able to run, play soccer, or boogie board anymore; or what it's like to be shunned by a church youth group.  For now, I should probably get back to work.

Happy Jenday!

Hey, guys.

Sorry for the wait, but the video is up!

What IS the video, exactly? Well.. we've recently found footage documenting what appears to be an attack on two unsuspecting citizens by the Child Actor's Guild (CAG).

Viewers be warned this footage is considered to be both shocking and derogatory.

Watch it right here, on our site, by clicking "Episodes" (and, leave us a comment telling us what you think!)

Or -- (do we sound like broken records yet?) go to YouTube, watch it there, and comment, rate, and favorite. Why do we ask you to do that? Because the more comments, etc. that YouTube has, the more it appears in various rotations, the more views we get, the more people are impressed, the more chances we have of going on TV, the more ability we have to invite all of you to be extras in our TV show.

See? So you're really helping yourselves.

Thanks, guys!

-Yuri