Rish Outcast 272: The Winter of Our Discontent

Back in 2023*, Rish recorded a sprawling episode, ostensibly about the winter, but much more about writing and sports and being an extra in a Clint Eastwood film, and the MATRIX sequels, podcasting, and Stephen King, "The Adventure of the German Student" by Washington Irving, and WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.  

You know, the usual.

To download this episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support Rish on his Patreon page, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "It's Bloody Summer Here" Moretto.

*He didn't know what winter was!!!!!

Anyone But You

From time to time, I get paid to be an extra in a film or television show.  I don't have an agent, and so, it's up to me to book my own work, and since I no longer live in L.A., that means hoping to find a spot on one of the two (or three . . . or sometimes one) productions that are happening in my area every month or so.  And that also means hoping that I fit one of the roles they're looking for, and that I get one of the two casting agents in the area--the one that doesn't dislike me.*  So, it's not just on me (though I've found that the faster you submit yourself after the call goes out, the more likely you'll be picked by whoever the casting agent is) to get work.

Having said that, I get emails a couple of times a week for films or commercials or TV shows, and I consider the day and location on every one I qualify for.

The most recent email I got looked promising.  There was a period project shooting just down the street from me (technically, about four miles away, but you know what I mean), and txhey were looking for men with beards/facial hair, within my age group (30-50).  So, I had my mom take my picture and I submitted myself . . . and didn't get chosen.

But the next day, they sent out another email saying, "We have need for more Men 25-55, please apply."  I noticed they had expanded the age range, but huh, I guess they still didn't need me.

But stranger, the next day, they sent out yet another email, this one saying, "There are still openings for x production.  We desperately need Men 20-70."  Strange.

And today, they sent out yet another email.  This one said something like, "Attention Men 18+ and man-looking women/children:  For the love of Our Lord, floating on His heavenly clouds, PLEASE SUBMIT YOURSELVES FOR THIS PROJECT!!

I hope your whole organization burns to the ground.  And you know what, Big Anklevich hopes it does too.  Long live anarchy.

*I've explained this before, but there was one that booked me on a project, then sent out an email to let me know the calltime for the next morning, and because I was a movie when I got the text, I waited two hours to get back to him, so he replaced me.  And when I called him up to say, "Hey, I cleared my schedule for tomorrow because I was booked and I said I would be there, you can't just ASSUME I would flake and give my spot to somebody else," he brownlisted me (ie, I didn't get work with him again for four years).  

Rish Outcast 241: Haul Out The New Year

Rish talks about "Haul Out The Holly," the first Hallmark Christmas movie he's watched.  

Then he tallies up all his New Year's Resolutions (and his old ones).

To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, come on, just click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Haul Out the New Beer" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 233: Yet Another Christmas Movie

Due to no popular demand, Rish talks about being on extra on yet another holiday movie.

To download the episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, Left-Click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Yet Another Anzac Day Movie" Moretto.

9/2

This was an extraordinarily busy day, and I'm still tired from it.  I worked, then mowed the lawn, then went to get my nephew out of school, because they emailed last night at 1:34am to tell us the calltime had been moved to one pm (from four pm).  The school secretary didn't ask my name or how I was connected to the boy, just went to the class and got him, then wanted to know details about the movie we were working on.  It's another Halmark Christmas movie, this one seemingly called THE HEART OF CHRISTMAS*, this one starring Lacey Chabert, Wes Brown, Ellen Travolta (who played the mom on, that's right, "Joanie Loves Chachi"), and Stephen Chobotsky.  It was far up in the hills nearly an hour distant, where folks have mansions bigger than anyone should, unless the resident is a U.S. congressman who enjoys hunting human beings for sport.

This was such a true 180 from the Christmas movie I worked on last year (where they wouldn't even let us stand in the shade by the "real" actors, and that poor old lady collapsed from the heat) that I wonder if there wasn't some blowback at Hallmark over it, maybe even a (well-deserved) lawsuit.  There were P.A.s running around making sure people were hydrated and cooling off, and they kept insisitng we wear light t-shirts and banana hammocks when we were not shooting, only putting on our winter garb once the camera started rolling.**

I took this picture because it looked like the reindeer were piled roadkill.  Sorry.

We shot everything in a cul de sac where all the houses were decorated for the holidays, including lights and fake snow (they had a big, industrial-sized snow-sprayer on set, that would spray jets of white chemical paste wherever they needed fake snow.  The most fun part of the shoot was the faux snowball fight we had, that we did over and over again, and got the blood really pumping every time we reset, gathered up all the snowballs (they were made of wet cotton-like material), and started again.  It was my nephew's favorite part too, even after someone hit him in the ear with a real one (they had a snow cone machine).

I have at least an hour's worth of anecdotes to share here about the day, but it's hard to know if it's worth it.  For example, there was a little black kid, around five or six, who seemed to be on the set alone (later I noticed that he had an older brother who was watching him, and as it got later, his mother showed up, with an even smaller kid, who looked--literally-two years old, yet spoke and acted like a five year old), and toward the end of the night, I heard him talking, saying that he's in the fifth grade (which makes him ten), but he's always being cast as a kindergartener or first grader.  That, to me, is fascinating (along with the idea that all of his siblings have the same . . . unique characteristic [I nearly said, "affliction," but didn't mean it in a rude way], which Emmanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman could've told us all about).  To you?

There were so many attractive or semi-attractive people milling around, it was kind of remarkable.  And there were a couple of child actors that were just staggeringly beautiful, and in watching one of them, who looked like an actual angel personified, I thought, "I'll bet she'll have a really cool life," and felt warmth not only toward her, but toward all mankind.

It was a very long day, especially for an eleven year old who had never done extra work before, but the pay was good and the activities varied (they must have shot five different scenes that day, four with us in them), and the boy told people he had a good time, which I found to be a relief.  

I haven't decided whether to talk about my experience in (yet) another Outcast episode.  Let me know if you would enjoy that.

Exercise Day: No (oh, I originally considered putting "Yes," because of the exercise of being on my feet for hours and participating in a mock snowball fight, over and over.  But hey, I didn't set aside time to specifically exercise, so I'll not count today...though at the end of the month, I may wish I had)

*I think I read somewhere that movies with "X-mas" in the title got streamed 2.3 times more than the movies without it, so I shouldn't blame them for having such an unmemorable title (I keep forgetting what it was called whenever people ask me), even though I still do.

**Okay, part of that was a joke.  I just find the term "banana hammock" to be amusing.  Too bad you don't.  Maybe the problem isn't with me, good sir or ma'am . . . maybe it's with you.

Rish Outcast 221: Another Spring, Another X-mas

Rish talks about his new audio collection and (yet another) springtime Christmas movie shoot.

To download the episode, Right Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, just click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Another Fall" Moretto.

Jaunary Sweeps - Day 712

I accidentally misspelled "January" in my post, and today, I'm just going to go with it.

I awoke before the sun, and took the same route (only slightly faster) than I did the day before.  There was almost no traffic, and while I got a tiny bit lost yesterday in getting there (arriving five or six minutes later than my phone said I would), I pretty much knew the way today.  But as I got there, I realized that I drove past the same road I'd just gotten off, and my phone had told me to go half a mile out of my way (if I ever work there again, I could drive right to it).

We had been warned (in an email the night before) that, if we wanted breakfast, to arrive early, and I got there about one minute late.  And they were right.  As soon as--I'm talking the second--I was done with my nose-swab COVID test, I was taken on set.  I didn't even get to take my coat off or put away my backpack. 

The show I got booked on is called "Holiday Wars," a cooking competition where teams are given a theme, and they design and complete festive cakes so elaborate that only Abigail Hilton could afford to eat (not that she would or anything--no offense).   I was just standing in for one of the competitors, and they needed us pretty much the whole day.  

There were two episodes to be filmed, and the stages were decorated in a delightful Christmas theme (Santa's village, trees with lights, snowy backdrops, a barn, a Santa sleigh, etc.), and a marvelously chilling Halloween theme (with a mausoleum entrance, a scary Southern mansion, full moon backdrops, a cemetery, bats, pumpkins, spiderwebs, and plenty of skeletons).  I was utterly impressed, and it didn't get old, even after being on the set for hours at a stretch.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In Jaunary: 1311

There were more cameras in use on this show than I've ever seen in any context (even sporting events).  I counted eleven cameras when we did the full rehearsal.  Each camera had an operator, and they had to rehearse the cameramen trying to get their footage without bumping into each other (there was still a lot of bumper car action out there, and Mike, the camera guy I was assigned, told me each lens (not just camera) was worth over ten thousand dollars.

One of the cameras was on a big control arm (on the right in the above photo), and it was fascinating to watch what the operator could do with it.  He made it snake around and rise and fall and go closer and farther away from the host, until it looked like something alive, like a serpent or a Xenomorph or something.  I was quite impressed, and mentioned it to him, and he said he didn't even think about it, that the machine worked as an extension of his hand at this point, which explains why it had such an organic set of movements, I guess.

I have talked (probably too much) in the past about how badly extras are treated on (some) film sets.  But I'm not sure if I've talked about times I've been a stand-in, and how MONUMENTALLY better stand-ins are treated in productions (I went back and re-typed "monumentally" in all caps to make a point).  And this was no exception.  We were talked to like human beings, allowed to ask questions, talk, and take pictures (!), and most importantly, allowed to eat with the crew . . . and the same food as they got.

And oh, mamma mia, the food was amazing.  The show is produced by the Food Network, and it just stands to reason it would have excellent food, but there were so many options, and I ate stuff I'd never had before (like cooked carrots in chipotle sauce), with options of beverages like the colors of a rainbow.  The only downside was that, because of the pandemic, no one could sit beside or near anyone else, and so it was like when I started college, eating at a table by myself (except I had the phone to entertain me, something that didn't exist in those bygone days of yore).

It was a singular experience, being a stand-in for a reality show/competition.  For one thing, it was lots of actual work, instead of just waiting around to be used.  As an extra, you're really only needed when the camera's rolling (or about to roll), and the rest of the time, you're a dim-witted parasite that gets in the way of the people trying to do their jobs.  A stand-in is pretty much the opposite: useful in set-ups and rehearsals, camera tests, sound tests, lighting tests, run-throughs, and once the camera starts rolling, absolutely disposable.*

Now, that's not to say that it was hard work.  The most difficult bit for me was to pantomime like I was cooking for about twenty-five minutes straight (and that was made far easier by there being literally hundreds of cooking implements at my workstation that I got out, arranged, pretended to use, organized, and put back) so the cameraman could get used to following my action, pulling focus, etc..  The cameraman, however, was really working.  That poor S.O.B. had to hold a thirty pound camera the whole time, constantly moving to keep me in frame, and when they gave us a five minute break, there was sweat running down the back of his shirt.  And he told me that for the actual shooting of the program, he would have to do that for seven hours, to the point where he could barely hold his arms up anymore, let alone the camera.**

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In Jaunary:  1192

We all had to wear masks (above picture notwithstanding), and these were the heavy-duty fiber ones that leave a mark on the nose and cheeks.  Because of that, I didn't know what people looked like, and as I've mentioned before during the pandemic, that makes them fascinating.  I stare at eyes, and try and imagine what the face is like, and when they pull their masks down, I sneak a peek, like a fourteen year old boy (or me at my age) trying to catch a glimpse of cleavage or a pantyline. 

The Halloween set was amazing, and as soon as I got on it, I exclaimed, "I want to live here!"  There was a girl nearby (another stand-in) who expressed similar feelings . . . and we got married.

Okay, that's not true, but we did get partnered up as part of a cooking team, so I hung out with her for an hour or so, and that was nice.  

There was so much to take in on the set, with details you couldn't see unless you studied them, and since we were just standing around, I had plenty of time to do so.  I still would've liked to be able to wander through and check everything out (a few of the photos I took didn't turn out, because I didn't have time to walk over to something and snap a good picture before we got called back to our first positions.

We ended up spending a lot less time in the Halloween stage than the Christmas one (probably four or five hours less), mostly because they had figured out camera set-ups and blocking on the first one), and I could've stood to spend more time.  I was on my feet for a long stretch, and by four or five o'clock, I wanted to--and did--sit down whenever I got a chance.  Those poor cameramen didn't have that option.

I also brought a paperback book with me, and read it while standing there, probably burning through a hundred pages or more.  That hadn't happened in a while.

I became pretty friendly with the woman in my first cooking team (we were randomly placed together), an older lady who reminded me of a blonde version of my mother, and she took the above photo of me after I volunteered to take one of her.  We ended up hanging out together the rest of the day, and when she was struggling to figure out how to fill out her payment forms/I-9 at the end of the night (it had been, oddly, put online instead of on paper, and she didn't know how to do it on a phone), I hung out and walked her through it.

Then we were free to go.  It was pitch black out, and the drive through the wilderness and the twisty canyon that followed were very different in the dark.  Still, it was an interesting experience, and I'd be happy to do it all again, even though I won't be seen on the show, if I actually did watch it.* **

Words Today: 475
Words In Jaunary: 7812

*I read this super in-depth books about the making of the original "Star Trek" a couple of years ago, and it talked about how they put the main cast's stand-ins in Starfleet uniforms, so they could use them as background and extra crewmen walking around, and pretty much all of them ended up getting character names (and lines of dialogue on the show), since they were always there anyway.

**There was a harness attached to his waist and back that helped him carry the camera, that had a pole going up above his head that attached to the top of the camera, but still.

***That reminds me, I was watching a YouTube video where they were talking about the various Spider-villains that showed up in NO WAY HOME, and when they flashed back to the Sandman in SPIDER-MAN 3, it was the moment where Thomas Hayden Church is walking up the sidewalk, and I was right behind him.  It pleased me to see myself, even if it was for a split-second, and I rarely feel that way.

November Sweeps - Day 651

This was kind of a unique day, for me and my nephew anyway.  We woke up when it was still dark, and drove to a town out in the middle of nowhere to work on a movie.  There was thick, wonderful fog that we drove through in the canyon (which might just have been low-hanging clouds that had filled the canyon).  I wish I had thought to have my nephew take some pictures of the fog, but I was too focused on a) being ten minutes late in getting out the door, and b) not crashing into anything as my visibility dropped down to close to zero.

We got a call about five miles from the town we were headed to, and I worried that I was going to get fired from (yet) another job.  But they were just calling to let us know that the school where we were shooting hadn't gotten unlocked yet (they'd moved the call time up an hour the night before, and my guess is, never told whichever school employee was coordinating with them) and for us to just wait in the car with our heaters on until they took care of it.

We were shooting in a middle school (that's a junior high to you, sir) that I thought was very nice, although the heat wasn't on. My nephew had been sick earlier in the week (his doctors call it walking pneumonia or something, and he gets it every year), but he was being pretty tough about it (I had warned him that 70% of the day would be taken up with sitting around waiting to be used, so he had made sure his phone was fully charged), but the thing he was most distressed about was there not being any food, like I said there would be.

There is always Craft Service of some sort on every single film set I've been on (except, ironically, the last one where the poor old lady passed out from the heat), and they always feed you lunch (except, unironically, the many, many productions where they set the extras home right before lunch so they weren't legally obligated to fee us), but this one had nothing.  The movie had just started shooting, and I got the impression they were still figuring things out, but boy, my nephew was really upset about the lack of food.  Finally, I went out to my car and grabbed some beef jerky and (stale) trail mix I'd had in there for a while, and he gobbled some of it up.

We were holding in the cafeteria and there was a radio playing low-volume Easy Listening (that I thought was somebody's cellphone until I tried to identify who was playing it), and it was cold.  But there was room for hundreds of kids in there, so the two dozen or so they had was fine, as well as the six or seven adults who were there to play teachers.

I had finished a book on Thursday and started a new one on Friday, and managed to get over a hundred pages of it read throughout the day.  They did bring food in--the usual Craft Service stuff of chips and nuts and candy and granola bars--and my nephew grabbed as much of it as I used to when I lived in Los Angeles and could never afford to buy junk food.

About half of the kids were boys and half were girls, and they were the ones who got used most, first in a scene out in the parking lot* where the main kid gets into a fight with (presumably) a bully and all the kids gather round to watch before a teacher breaks it up.

And then they were moving into the school, and made an announcement that the teachers were done for the day.  This was one of those rare gigs that paid in cash, and they gave me my money, but I was there as a driver too too, so I was in it for the long haul.**

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In November: 1333

It's a kids Sci-Fi movie with aliens in it that weren't working that day (they put out a call for kids who stood between 4'3" and 4'7" to play aliens, and I tried hard to get my 11 year old nephew to sign up to play one, but he flat-out refused, even when both his parents encouraged him to at least try--when I think of how excited I would've been at his age to even watch a movie about aliens, let alone play one, it reminds me that these are most assuredly not my kids, no matter how much time I spend with them), most of the scenes taking place in a classroom with the two leads of the movie, who discover the alien plot in their town.

Unlike most of the productions I worked on in Los Angeles, every single teen in the classroom (and hall) was played by an actual teen.  They ranged in age from thirteen to (presumably) seventeen, and a couple of them actually attended that school.***

And right before lunchtime, one of the A.D.s came into the cafeteria and asked if any of us adults still wanted to play teachers, even though we were technically off the clock.  I stood up and volunteered, and there were four of us that did crosses in the hallway outside of the classroom.  It was the absolutely opposite of glamorous, and there is literally no way I will be visible in any of the shots (I could've been walking on my hands, with absolutely no pants on, and it would not have made one bit of difference), but you know me, I was happy to do it.

After that, they fed us cold submarine sandwiches, half of which were veggie and half were meat.  They didn't tell us this, though, so my nephew and I got veggie ones, and ate them without complained, not noticing until after that some kids had the other kind.  From this point on, our holding was in an adjoining classroom, with all of the kids jammed in.  Besides me, only one of the four adults hung out in there, the other two heading for the hills.

See, kids are loud.  I hadn't been around that many, and in that enclosed an environment, or for that long, in many years.

One of the girls got the idea to play Hangman on the dry erase board, and after a while, I played too, even guessing the answer a couple of times and going up myself.  I didn't want to alienate these kids, so I tried to come up with a TV show that was current, something they'd be sure to recognize (there was virtually no one in that room--except for the other guy playing a teacher--who would know what "Welcome Back Kotter" or "Leave It To Beaver" or even "Desperate Housewives" was, so I picked a 2021 show title for my hangman round.

No one of them--not a single one--had heard of "Only Murders In The Building."  It made me feel about as old as the dude in the cartoon listening to Bad Guy by Billie Eilish.

A lot of the kids couldn't spell very well, which is kind of important when you're playing Hangman, and one of the boys, when called out on this, said, "Nobody needs to know how to spell things, not when there's Grammarly."  It was such an odd comment that I instantly became my father, at least for a few seconds.  Of course, when I was his age, and Spell Check was invented, you could be forgiven for saying the same thing.  I try to know how things are spelled because I'm a writer, and more importantly, I love the English language, but the kid is probably right--just like I have no use for higher math in my day to day life, he probably DOESN'T need to know the difference between "Your" and "You're."

There was a big white plastic box above the board, and one of the boys started playing with it.  I asked, "What is that thing?" and the kids looked at me like I was an Amish guy asking about a tongue stud.  Turned out, it was a projector (complete with internet connection, so the kids could link their phones to it), a device that's in every school in America, but I had never seen before.****

Still, it was an odd experience, hanging out with a bunch of kids for several hours, and reminded me of the fantasies I used to have (not THOSE kind of fantasies, Professor) about getting to go back to high school again, but with the knowledge that I had a decade or so later.  I'm sure I still wouldn't fit in, but it sure is interesting to contemplate.

Push-ups Today: 100
Push-ups In November: 1393

They kept calling in kids who were in the classroom to go back in, depending on where they were sitting, to do the scene over and over, and whenever the camera pointed at the door, I walked past it a time or two.  By this point, I just brought my book with me, reading it in between takes.  Standing around doing nothing and repeating the scene over and over is part and parcel of filmmaking, and there's really nothing to be done about it.*****

My nephew impressed me (once he could get away from "Grey's Effing Anatomy," which he watched six episodes of throughout the day) by palling around with the kids, playing Hangman and making paper airplanes and throwing pink Starbursts around (for some reason, nobody wanted the pink ones, picking out the other colors first).  I'm not great at making (or keeping) friends, so I thought that was cool (of course, had I been the one to hit it off with a bunch of teenagers, then everybody but me would've found something wrong with that).

And then, it was time to go.  We had been there twelve hours.  We got paid, and I took the boy out for hamburgers (I was disgusted to find, as I have been all year, that every restaurant in that little out-of-the-way town except McDonalds either closed their lobby at eight or nine, or were not even open for dine-in, just drive-thru.

I hope it was a positive experience for my nephew.  It was the second time we'd ever done that together (the first time was years ago, for a series Steven Soderbergh made for HBO, and my nephew was about nine then), and we'll see if he wants me to sign him up to do it again.

Words Today: 236
Words In November: 9720

*They did use my car, though, which in L.A. would've paid extra.

**It never occurred to me that I could have just taken off and driven around, gotten some food or something, or simply gone to sleep in the car (which is way more comfortable than trying to sleep on an unwiped school cafeteria table); I just hung around to make sure the boy was fine, which was the more responsible choice anyway.

***Sadly, at the end of the day, those who went to school there were told that they had simply been all-day volunteers, and would not be paid, whereas only those who had signed up through a casting agent were doing it for money, like us.  I really felt for them, most of which had shown up just for fun, then heard we were being paid, and were greatly disappointed to find out it didn't include them.

****In the story I wrote for my uncle the other week ("Here With My Childhood Friend"), I had reference to a sound being like nails on a chalkboard to Alicia, the little girl in the story.  But it occurred to me that there's no way a kid (even if she's, technically, sixteen or so in the story) would know what a chalkboard is outside of movies.  It's as archaic a device as a telegraph was in my youth.  So I added "in a cartoon" to the description.  This was like that, only the opposite.

*****In my many years' experience, the project with the most repeated takes was doing the movie ZODIAC with David Fincher, and the one with the fewest was that day in 2006 at the L.A. airport working on a South Korean movie (those guys really knew efficiency).

Rish Outcast 201: A Christmas Extra

 Rish talks about his most recent extra work, on a Christmas movie not shot at Christmastime.

Download this bad boy by Right-Clicking HERE.

Hey, I don't beat this drum very often, but this is really an episode that's better for Patreons (with about thirteen extra minutes) than for the general release version.  In fact, the whole episode was supposed to be for them, until I realized I'd been stuck in traffic for forty-five minutes, and I decided to make an Outcast of it.  So, one more time: HERE is a link to my Patreon account, if you'd care to come onboard.

Logo by Gino "Extra! Extra!" Moretto.

May Sweeps - Day 459

I type this super tired and sunburned.  More tired than sunburned, but still, one may contribute to the other.  It doesn't make me want to blog all that much.

I worked on a TV series today, outdoors, in a football uniform, and while they really exercised me for about an hour (might only have been 45 minutes), I was tired for the rest of the day.  It didn't help that I got home from my cousin's house at nearly three am the night before, with no words written, and forced myself to get at least 200 words before I fell asleep . . . and then my alarm went off only three hours later.

They hired a bunch of big athletic guys to play the real football players (although a couple of them were pushing middle age--I guess with a helmet on you'd never know), a pair of stuntmen to play the tackler and tacklee, some old men to play coaches, and a handful of other guys to play miscellaneous.  I was one of those.  I showed up on set, bleary eyed, squinting at the rising sun, without an idea of what I was there for.  "Did you bring compression shorts?" the wardrobe lady asked me.

"I'm not sure what those are.  Something you put on a sprained wrist or ankle?"

She handed me a pair, and they turned out to be longish boxer-type underwear.  

I put on my benchwarmer football uniform (four of us were guys who were in training, apparently), and was surprised by how elaborate the whole setup was.  It took a full minute to lace my pants up*, and two minutes just to loop my belt.  Later, I found out I had put the pads on wrong, like you see in this picture:

Turns out I wasn't the only guy who had the shoulder pads over our chest and back instead of our shoulders.  Whoops.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 461

There was a guy on the set whose arms were gargantuan, truly amazing, immense things, complete with veins so prominent, they seemed about the size of my own arms.  He had played in the NFL, and his kids had encouraged him to show up that day, and while he was a very nice guy (and way friendlier to me than he looked like he should be), he was making for the whole day approximately what he made in an hour in professional football.

I have never played football (I guess I played flag football a few times, centuries ago, but as a kid I wouldn't have played tackle football for a thousand dollars an hour.  Although that seems like a lot of money, considering I wouldn't have survived even a single hour, it wouldn't have amounted to much.

The way we were treated on Friday was so poor I did a whole podcast about it (I'll put a link in here in a couple weeks when I finish editing it), but I have to say that the way we were treated on this set was up there with the best, most respected and valued, I've ever seen extras treated.  No exaggeration, I personally was offered water five or six times throughout the day, and the P.A. in charge of us, name of Ariel, was so nice and concerned and accommodating**, that I fantastized about marrying her at the end of the day.

In the end, the coaches and whatever the heck we weres were allowed to go home early, since they really only needed the "real" football players for the last set-up, and I was immensely grateful to be sent home.  But I still had to do a little bit of regular work, exercise, and figure out something to write before I keeled over.

Extra work, while several yards from glamorous, does not pay well, but I continue to do it, and continue to want to do it, and that says something about me, doesn't it?

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In May: 500

I was insanely tired, and wrote a paragraph--which I could easily turn into two paragraphs on a normal day--checked my word count, then wrote two more, and called it quits.

Words Today: 259
Words In May: 2714

*A few hours later, when I went into the bathroom to pee, I realized it would be a Herculean effort to get my pants down (especially with the belt, shirt, and jersey over them, so I chose to just hold it in.

**And determined to not only learn all of our names, but make sure all of us were comfortable and having a good time.  None of that was strictly in her job description, but made me want to go above and beyond instead of focus solely on snagging craft services and staying in the shade.

April Sweeps - Day 453

Look, I ain't saying today sucked--it didn't, in fact--but this was a fourteen hour day, easily the longest day I've had since starting this daily writing/exercise/blogging thing.  And I was really tempted to just say "It was a good run, but eff it."

But I forced myself to do 50 push-ups at 1:00am, and fifty sit-ups at 1:20am, and now it's 1:41am, and I'm going to squeeze out fifty words.  And that's all I can do today.  It's gonna have to be good enough.

Sit-ups Today: 50
Sit-ups In April: 3016

Today was the first day of extra/background work I've done in a year.  While I was there, waiting to be used--there was a lot of waiting around, which is typical, but because it was outdoors, it ended up being a lot of standing around, and that ended up being hard on my back (and a lot of other people, who complained about that, or the heat.  Or both).  I had gotten an email from my friend Jeff in Germany, where he talked about not liking cellphones and how he missed the lengthy letters we would write each other back in the day.

So, to entertain myself, and partially to piss off Jeff, I decided to send him a running commentary--all in audio--of what I was doing, seeing, and thinking of.  Honestly, I must've sent him ten different recordings throughout the day (and night), that he said only amounted to thirty minutes or so, but it felt like a lot more than that.

Being an extra is mostly waiting to be used, and if I had a thousand dollars for every time I've gotten on a set and NOT been used, but was just paid to sit and read (or worse, sleep), I'd have a lot more money than I do now.  Or ever will have.*  

That having been said, they really worked us on this shoot, probably since there were supposed to be many more people walking, milling around, and clapping.  They even did that thing first done in FORREST GUMP (it was revolutionary then, and now as old hat as the hero trying to save the bad guy from falling and the bad guy tries one last bit of treachery that leads to their death, or the female good guy being the one to take out the female bad guy, or a female character is horribly unpleasant but we accept her because she looks like Jennifer Aniston or Reese Witherspoon (granted, this one is a little bit newer.  But only a little bit), where they shoot a small group and then move them and shoot that and then move them and shoot that, combining it all digitally later so it looks like there are hundreds of people.

There were twenty-five of us, and a half dozen tuba players, and we got plenty of use, plenty of walking around behind the principal actors.  Several extras had those Apple Watch things (am I dating myself--by calling them things--even further than I did when referring to Reese Witherspoon as attractive?), and compared how many steps (ie miles) they had walked through the day.  The distance was unbelievable.  It was almost enough for me to want to buy one.

Or to want to sit down.

The thing that was most cool about the set was, because it was set in December, there was fake snow and fake Christmas decorations all over.  And on all of the spring tulips, they had put this thick white foam from a machine that looked like soap in person, but on the monitors looked EXACTLY like snow.  The problem was, the foam evaporated or melted or whatever foam does, and they had to keep spraying more on in between set-ups.

We were told the next day that we were not supposed to take any pictures (and apparently somebody did and posted them online, and they were baaaaaaaad little extras), but I had already done so, and told the A.D. (assistant director) that I'd taken photos of the foam.  And he said, "The foam?  What are you, some kind of creepy pervert?"

To which, I said, "Oh, you have NOOOOOOO idea."

It was a long day, with lots of activity, and very little of interest to you (I'm sure).  Suffice it to say, it was a warm April day (and night) but it's a Christmas movie, so we pretended it was winter, and that included wearing thick jackets and long-sleeved shirts, gloves, and scarves.  I got word that one of the Gen Zs actually put on socks!

(here you can see both the foam and them hosing down the street)

I made friends with an old man (well, he told me he was seventy-one, and that's not that old, really, but he looked old), who impressed me with his positive attitude and professionalism.  He and I were the only extras that worked both Thursday and Friday, and at the end of the day, he gave me a Diet Pepsi.**  Afterward, I thought, "You know, maybe I should call my dad, and ask if he'd want to work on one of these projects with me.  It could be something we could do togeth--"  

And only then did I remember that he's been gone nearly five years.  So, so strange.

Just for fun, I fact-checked yesterday's reference to Strom Thurmond speaking at my graduation, and that puts my graduating class either as 1955 or 1956.  Huh.

Push-ups Today: 50
Push-ups In April: 3160

So, one last mention of the story I started to record yesterday: usually when I sit down and perform a story, I add lines to it here and there.  This was no exception, but it was the first time I recorded a story and then thought, "You know, this is way too long.  I ought to go back in and cut out, not only the additions I just made, but about two hundred words beyond that."

See, in "Two Month Retreat" (or whatever the story's called), a young married couple has an argument, then the guy takes a walk alone to cool off.  That's when the story really begins (honestly, it could start right after the argument is done, if I wanted to be a screenwriter about it (there's this old suggestion that you start a scene as late as you can and you get out of a scene as early as you can.  I don't subscribe to that point of view at all, but it probably works great in editing***).  The story's not about the fight, but about the aftermath of the fight.

And the politics of the day really influenced that fight, so it takes up a couple of pages instead of the two or three paragraphs it needed.  Hmmm.

Words Today: 207
Words In April: 20,012

*Unless you want to support me on Patreon at this link.  You could tip me on Paypal, if you like, but I am no longer able to access that money, so maybe I should take the Paypal link down.  I'll explain on Sunday.

**To my horror, I thought it tasted just fine.

***Check out the first cut of any scene in STAR WARS, for example.  The Cantina scene, for example, originally began with Luke going into the bar and then looking around.  You see a bunch of humans (including Han Solo making out with a hot chick), and a few aliens, and an establishing shot of the group, and then cutting back to Luke taking it all in, but the droid alarm goes off and the bartender says (in an English accent) "Hey there, your droids, mate.  We don't serve their kind here."  Luke says, "What?" and the English Wuher says, "Your droids.  They'll have to wait outside.  We don't want them here, ya wanker."  And in the final edit, we start with a barrage of delightful aliens of every shape and color, lose most of Luke gawking, and don't see Han until a second before he introduces himself.  

Rish Outcast 172: Interesting Times

So, I got another quick episode out in a (vain) attempt to make my goal this month.

In this one, I talk about what's been up the past weeks, Mother's Day, a couple more stories about being an extra, and wax nostalgic (or revolting) about the Carousel ice cream parlor.



To download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, Click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Interesting Crimes" Moretto.

Rish Outcast 169: The Extra Episode

In this one, I sit down and talk a bit about a recent job I had as a television extra, then talk a lot more about doing extra work in general.

Let me know if this is a subject you'd like me to revisit.  I could go on for hours.



To download this episode, just Right-Click HERE.

To support me on Patreon, just Left-Click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Extra-Extra" Moretto.*

*Hey, Gino, you think you could make me a green one?

February Sweeps - Day 78

The sun is going down, and it looks like a nice sunset is happening in the distance.  I am tempted to do my run now, and again, it blows my mind that I look more forward to running 1.6 miles than I do to writing a thousand words.*  So far, I'm at 145.

This last five months (I'm going from December to now) has been the most interesting ones in a long, long time.  My levels of motivation have been sky-high (though I feel like they may have abated some since January and February), my productivity has been . . . well, pretty good, but I've shared almost none of it (and that was always a bigger problem than the actual writing).  The snafu with eBay yesterday notwithstanding, I'm selling tons of figures, at a level with the annual highpoints of November and December, and I'm slowly whittling away at my debt (part of it is that I'm not buying anything new).

Let me frankly ask the question of what the Rish Outfield of April 2019 would think of me now.  Maybe he'd be jealous, and say, "Wow, you really do look less fat than I do.  What's your secret?"  And he'd be impressed I wrote a new Sidekick story, my Little Caesars story, and a bunch of Dead & Breakfasts (in his time, there was only one), but then he'd say, "What about Balms & Sears, did you finish that one?"  He could ask about a handful of other projects in-progress, or worse, ask about stories, novellas, and the one unpublished novel, and whether I'd put those out there.  He could also ask me about my social life, and if I actively see more than a single friend face-to-face a week.  And I guess I'd have to admit that, even that has stopped, but it's not my fault, there's a disease going around that keeps people from going to other people's houses or to parties or clubs or bars or conc--

"Suuuuuure," 2019 Rish would say.  "And Trump's going to get re-elected with numbers so high, they're close to what he claimed he won in 2016 by."

Hmmm.

But I think he'd be at least somewhat impressed, and at least somewhat proud of me, and I'd wish him the best of luck and suggest he buy up any Indominus Rex masks he could still find, because they'd sell for a hundred bucks apiece in a few months.

Gosh, I wonder what a conversation with the Rish Outfield of April 2021 would be like.

Sadly, I only managed eight hundred words tonight.  I was just too tired, falling asleep three or four times while editing (and to be honest, fighting a dipping head while typing this).  I recognized that it would only take about a hundred words to get me to a thousand, but I just couldn't manage.  I told myself I'd write a hundred and eight words in the morning before I got out of bed.

Words Today: 892
Words In April: 20,728

P.S. I always post these each day.

Day 18. "Midnight Train To Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips. 
I didn't grow up with this song.  I first heard it while working on the show "Boston Public" in 2000 or 2001.  I played a student in a class (I think it was a math class) and the teacher didn't show up, and Loretta Devine's character (Marla Hendricks) came in to substitute, and since she didn't know anything about the subject, she taught the students "Midnight Train" and had the girls sing one part and the boys sing the other.  We must have gone through that song fifty times that day in Manhattan Beach, California.  And since all of us were singing together, they don't consider that a line of dialogue, so we were all paid base non-union rates for it.  But a couple of months later, I heard the Gladys Knight version on the radio and I perked right up.  I STILL remembered the boys' part she had taught us in the faux class.  And that's how I still sing it today.
Thanks, Loretta!

*The other day, Big asked me why I would even bother trying to get to a thousand words when I didn't explicitly have to.  I didn't have a good answer for that other than, "Well, if you can do a thousand, then I sure as hell can."

February Sweeps - Day 34

Okay, I did write today, and I think I did very well.  I was writing on the Dead & Breakfast story I was considering calling "Who You Gonna Call?" and got right up to the part where the guests start to show up (it's one of those stories where the author has to conceal something important from the reader, and I don't know how long I can keep that up . . . but it'll be fun to try). The problem is, I was away from my computer, so my writing I did in my notebook, and I'm not going to waste time counting the words tonight.

I'll have to type them up anyway, so I'll leave the word count blank today, and see if I can't count 'em up tomorrow at the library (UPDATED - done, but it took a long time).

I'll try to blog a bit about today's work too, but I guess I have to be vague about it (I've only ever had to sign a NDA working on a film set three times--1) "Desperate Housewives," 2) A Super Bowl commercial [the one where I wrote "Choice of a Sidekick"], and 3) Today).

But I did want to mention a couple interesting things that occurred today.  One was that there were a few ridiculously attractive people working on the show, both girls and guys (I only noticed one what's-his-name-from-TWILIGHT-looking dudes, but there were probably more).  It was kind of startling, because I'm used to not seeing many extraordinarily good-looking people all in one place--it's usually one who walks into a room and all heads turn, because they are atypical.

But I guess on a TV series, they're going to go for that sort of thing because, well, why wouldn't they?  It explains why I'm continually denied work on these projects lately, though.  But anyway, something that I observed was that, although all doors open for these real-life fembots (and menbots too), they got called onto set in the very first batch, and placed right there around the principle actors, so they were in pretty much every single set-up, right in front of the camera.  That meant that these beauties were working while the rest of us just sat around, waiting to be used.  The rest of us read, ate, spoke to one another, wrote (in my case), dorked around on our phones or laptops, or slept.

I don't know if that's interesting to you, but it sure was to me.

Also, at the table I observed a girl drawing human eyes in a notebook.  I watched what she was doing--drawing two eyes on a page, then going to the next page and drawing more eyes (sometimes it was more than two, one time it was one).  Finally, I crossed the table and went over to talk to her, to compliment her art, see if she does it all the time (thinking, maybe I could ask if she'd do a cover for me sometime), and feel out whether she might like to go to a hotel with me for the night (she had driven 168 miles/270 kilometres to work on the show that morning).

I sure would like to say that that all worked out fine, and I was rewarded for actually getting out of my shell for once.  I wish I could tell you that, but prison is no fairytale world.  I think me noticing her drawing made her uncomfortable, and she became self-conscious all of a sudden (of course, if it had been YOU that noticed, it would've been another kettle of fish).

Another thing I wanted to talk about was sitting at a table with a strange man, and watching him arrange the silverware, his glass, his napkin, and pieces of pizza in a manic, OCD sort of way.  Pieces of pizza, kids.  At one point, he was looking over at my side of the table, agitated . . . and I realized my fork and knife were not parallel to each other.

Maybe I'll podcast about it, and try not to say what the show wa--

You know, I don't think it's the name of the show they're worried about.  I think it was people filming the shooting, taking selfies on the set, and/or reporting on story developments they're trying to avoid.  And I didn't do any of that.  Darn it.

Tomorrow is going to be a near-record high temperature for March.  I guess I should take advantage of it, before Coronavirus steals my precious bodily humours.

Oh, one last thing before I go to bed.  I grabbed the travel bag I always take with me up to the cabin to work with me this morning, and I literally filled it with craft service food (unlike some, when I say "literally," I mean it in English...I mean, the zipper didn't want to close all the way), which was something I started doing in Los Angeles when I was dirt poor (I would take five apples instead of just one, so I'd have something to eat over the next two days).  It's something I can't stop doing: every time I go to the craftie table, I grab two of something (and because I'm sort of dieting, I didn't even eat any of it today) and put it in my bag.

So, when I got home, I got my nephew to help me unload this bag, with chips and cookies and candy and tangerines and cashews and fish crackers and Starbursts and pretzels and Slim Jims . . . and digging around in it, what did he find?  Well, my camera, the FauxPro that I bought so I could record "Tales of eBay Horror" episodes on, and I had lost months and months ago, telling everyone that my two year old nephew must've thrown it in the trash can.

I plugged it in, and it has three TOEHs on it, as well as the tour of the family cabin I did for Gino . . . and oh my sombrero-wearing God, I recorded it right after I shaved my head, so my hair looks like if Charlie Brown had a baby with Mister Peanut.

The good news is, I can start making videos again (that don't have Vertical Video Syndrome).  But the bad news is, I don't know if that tour video will ever see the light of day.

Rish Outfield

P.S.  Okay, I went to the library the next day (3-6), and typed up my words, so here's today's report:

Words Today: 2186
Words in March: 6,977

Rish Outcast 100: Q&A Slight Delay

So, Rish presents his effed-up short story "A Slight Delay," and as if you have all the time in the world, answers a few listener questions.

Do NOT look them in the eye.

Download it by Right-Clicking HERE.

Patreon page HERE.

Rish Outcast 94: Mister Brightside

This was supposed to be my Thanksgiving show, but alas, I'm still a week behind from October.

Rish tries to stay positive, and talks about being an extra in a commercial.  And Fake Sean's gotta be down, because he wants it all.



If you wanna download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you wanna support me via Patreon, Right-Click HERE.

Rish Outcast 87: Mastercard...I'm Bored

A combination episode of my New Year's show (timely, yes), and one from just the other day, wherein I talk about boredom, upcoming goals, and recount an almost-story about the film industry.

Do you wanna download this?  Then Right-Click HERE!

Note: Because time is fleeting (and madness takes its toll), the next episode will be for Patreon supporters only.  That way, the Halloween episode can drop before Halloween.  Listen, but not for very much longer.

Zombie Tough Guy (a post-script)

So, I was doing my write-up (of yesterday's extra work) after getting home, and this happened:

For the most part, everybody in the group of zombies was very cool and easy-going.  Sure, there was some complaining about the make-up and the heat (which, when combined with the smoke machines, was worse than any mugginess I've ever experienced in this country), but the participants seemed to understand that it was a rare opportunity, and even though we were not given any instruction beyond "You ever watch 'The Walking Dead?'  Yeah, you're like that," the performances were pretty-much Romero-quality.

Oh wait, I forgot.  There was one moment that bears mentioning.  The group sitting immediately next to me was a funny, frat-boy-type quartet, talking about drugs and objectifying all the women they saw, passing the time playing Poker or Spades or Hearts or Blackjack (they'd even thought to bring Poker chips).  They made each other do push-ups and make animal noises (sometimes simultaneously).  They mocked each other pretty relentlessly, calling each other "faggot" and "tree-monkey" and "pussy" and "mongoloid" and the like, the harmless fun males partake of when they've got too much testosterone and nowhere to go.

When one of the guys called the dude next to me "dickless," he took it in stride, saying "That's not what your mother found out last night," and it was the next guy's turn to take a swipe.  

But he didn't.  He froze, his nostrils doing that thing the T-Rex in Jurassic Park did.  Apparently, a line had been crossed.  He said, "You don't know nothin' about my mama," in a tight whisper, staring daggers at my neighbor.  The offender shrugged and said, "Alright," then meant to go back to his game.  But the offendee's friend shook his head, and the look in this guy's eyes was nothing short of murderous.  "You say you're sorry," he muttered.  "What?"  "Say you're sorry about what you said."  The guy next to me suggested, "Let's just let it go."  

And the friend stood up and went around the table, facing him.  "You say you're sorry right now."  Now, I know that they say "boys will be boys," and pissing contests exist, and a bunch of stereotypes are always flying around, but this was not cool.  Everybody within range picked up on what was going on, even those who hadn't been paying attention before, and any and all camaraderie and easy-goingness (if that's a word) had fled the room.

To the guy next to me's further credit, he said, "It was just a joke.  Forget it."  But dude if the defender of a full-grown man wasn't out for blood now.  "I'll give you one more chance to say you're sorry," he growled, like something out of a really bad Godfather knock-off.  He looked like an enraged bull with two swords already in its back . . . unless that sounds racist.  In which case, he looked like an enraged convict with a shiv in a prison movie who wears a do-rag and sports a wide array of colorful gangland tattoos.*

I don't know if I mentioned that these guys were friends, had partied together the night before, and had all driven to the set together that morning.**  Finally, the guy next to me, who was half the size of the bull/convict, put his hands up and said, "Yeah, I'm sorry.  It was a bad joke."  The two who'd been upset (they were cousins), left the set because they needed a smoke, and didn't come back for a long while.

There's a full moon out tonight.  Maybe he was bitten by an asshole in the woods years ago, and now, every time the moon is full and bright . . .

And here's the thing: as scary as that was, I don't know if I would've apologized either, if I'd been the guy next to me.  The reaction these two--sorry, I've gotta say it--douchebags had was so out of proportion with the wrong they'd been dealt, and the fact that, had there been some kind of extenuating detail we didn't know about (such as his mother being dead, or jail for a crime she was framed for by The Man, or a simple crackwhore, or a saintly sweet woman who ne'er did nobody no wrong) that would have explained his macho posturing and near-homicidal demeanor, it would have been perfectly alright to explain it, instead of just demanding the apology because he was the Alpha Male.  It was so ugly, and so unwarranted, I too might have stood my ground, if only to say, "You may be stronger than me, but what you're doing right now is one of the weakest things I've seen."

Of course, those would've probably been my last words, and in the moment, I may well have caved, but considering the good-natured ribbing and over-the-line name-calling that had been going on all weekend long, it struck me as the complete opposite of being a tough, admirable example for males to follow.

Now, I had a cousin who was a bit like that growing up, and sometimes I think I'd like to hit him with a brick, just to see what color his blood is, but he never frightened me the way this psycho did.  If he had, well . . .

Let's change the subject.

Dang, talking about this has bummed me out.  I think I might delete all this, or at least put it in its own post, because it ruins the fun of playing a zombie in a movie. 

At least a little.

Rish Outfield

*And if I still sound racist, how 'bout if I suggest that I saw that same look in Kirk Cameron's eyes one time when an interviewer suggested the earth was more than six thousand years old?

**Afterward, the guy sitting next to me said that the only reason he backed down was because they were his ride home, but if he had driven them there as he had the day before, he'd have just let them find their own transportation.  And I gotta wonder what that drive home was like, though it's more than likely that both cousins never brought it up again and acted as though nothing ever happened.