An Extra Effort

I got word from a future son of mine that he'd like to hear more about what his father was doing prior to killing himself, thus robbing him of his singular existence. Or was I murdered? I wasn't really paying attention. Heck, it might not have been a future son at all, but a kid selling subscriptions to Martha Stewart Living. And where's my wallet?

Regardless of the reason, I thought it might be a good idea to write up a semi-regular report on what I'm working on lately, since it's marginally more interesting than what I used to do (and that was only slightly more interesting than what, say, Hume Cronyn is doing right now). And since I, at one time, had an internet blog, I thought maybe that would be a good forum for it.

Oh, and it helps that my worst pal tyranist mentioned yesterday that he'd discovered my now-defunct web blog. The bastage.

I moved to Los Angeles, California some years ago, with the dreams many small town kids share of working in the greatest industry in the world, telling my stories, and being paid an honest wage to do something I love, as well as dating ridiculously young, drugged-out former child actresses.

Unfortunately for me, I was born with no ambition (and, incidentally, no left testicle, but let's keep that between us), and I went nowhere literally before I started, and found myself looking for work. Having been a Theater Arts major once (and also wanting the chance to work on "Star Trek"), I decided to try extra work and called up Central Casting.

For those of you far from the pretentious and over-caffeinated, an extra is a person hired for a film, television show, or commercial, who has no lines and fills the background of any given scene. Basically a human prop, they move to and fro, inconspicuous, to flesh out the universe of filmed sequences. They are called Non-lined Actors, Atmosphere, Environment, or even Background Artists, but you know them as Extras.

The first work I did as an extra was on "The X-Files" (actually, a couple years earlier it was "Touched By An Angel" first, but let's also keep that between us), and there's a pretty good story about that day (maybe I'll tell it sometime), and I actually did extra work full time for a few months (my last work was on Fox's "Boston Public," remember that one?) before going on to . . . well, less fanciful pastures.

Years passed. The world turned, and suddenly, it turned back to where it was before. And hey, so did I. I'm back doing extra work again, and I've had several fun and unique experiences (and gained fifteen or so pounds, I reckon), from the first show ("24") to today's ("Scrubs").

I don't know how long this will last, but if I write about it, maybe I can make the best of it.

With a little extra luck, that is.

Rish Hollywood Outfield