Will Hines Dot Net

I eat one, then I eat the whole bag — no matter what. And then I’m sick with carrots.

I need more pictures in this thing. Perhaps next time.

What has been happening? Here’s what:

• Last Saturday during the blizzard my car starting billowing smoke from under its hood while reaching the end of the Williamsburg Bridge. All at once, the engine seized and I was left stranded in the middle of the exit ramp at 2am. A DOT truck pushed me the rest of the way off into a snow bank, safely out of the way of traffic, so I could wait an hour and forty-five minutes for a AAA tow truck. God bless you Triple AAA. Even though I had to wait inside a freezing cold car for you, I almost cried when you showed up. I had taken off my wet shoes and wrapped my scarf around my toes. I felt like a shitty version of George Washington at Valley Forge, except instead of the redcoats I was battling a 1987 Honda.
• Dyna and then Brett quit Monkeydick over the past two weeks. It’s sad to see them go, but if someone’s not happy or they’re dissatisfied, it’s better that they go. The six of us lumber on.
• Worked at my old day job for six days of the past two weeks. Now that I’ve settled into unemployment, this relatively small workload completely drained me. It also halted my exercising and improved eating habits cold and I started drinking coffee like it was air.
• Filmed a five-minute TV pilot for Tony’s Channel 102 (channel102.net) experiment. “The Fun Squad” — another in a series of “instant shows.” Very fun to do.
• The cats are much better now. They’re very social with me, although they still flee from strangers. Hopey chases the cursor around my computer screen. Maggie prefers to wait until I’m sitting on the toilet before weaving in and out of my legs.
• Going to see my Dad right now for his birthday.

This has been a rough week, nameless audience!

More pics and stuff later.

Game Face performed its show, and it went great. Mostly great. It rounded up to great. Very good, at least. Really. We had decided to do a show of all-new and all-political material, but put it off long enough that we were crazed throwing it together. One of the sketches we essentially re-wrote at lunch. But I feel like we’ve all done enough stuff together and separately that we can do a LOT in a short time.

A big house showed up: like sixty people, I guess? Gavin and Silvjia handed out Hershey’s kisses to people as they walked in. Neil did a great right-wing Statue of Liberty. Rob’s “John Kerryoke” was great. Mitch came through with a very “him” sketch called “The Only Bush I Trust Is The One In My Yard” — taken from Rob’s title — in which he’s a guy and I’m a bush in his yard, and he trusts me. It hit pretty big, perhaps because Mitch had me dressed up as an enormous hedge.

Quickly-developed shows are both exciting and exhausting. It’s best when there’s time for pitch meetings, table reads, rewrites, dress rehearsal, tweaking, final dress and show. Then there’s shows like tonight — write it Sunday, rewrite it Wednesday, buy props Thursday and do it that night. Not quite that bad, but it was closer to that template than the other. I didn’t have time to be creative with prop-making so I just cruised into Halloween Adventure costume shop and slapped down cash for a statue of liberty headpiece and a construction worker’s helmet. I was stressed out, or as much as you can be when trying out fake Statue of Liberty torches amongst aisles of wigs and fake mustaches.

Second favorite moment of the day: trying to clean up specific word/prop choices right before going on stage. “What’s funnier, a broom or a shovel?” Mitch asked me, and I surprised myself by having a very passionatie opinion: “A shovel, definitely.” Also Neil wrestling with whether his Statue of Liberty should berate his driver as being a “bleeding heart” or a “blame-America-first” leftists.

Favorite moment of the day: While reading sketches through in the green room today, Bobby Moynihan overheard us and said “If you guys need full-sized cutouts of Bush, Kerry and Angelina Jolie, I’ve got them in my car.”

So I did a commercial. I still am not sure if it will be shown anywhere other than channel 403 in upper Westchester County anytime before midnight, or how it will look if it is shown. But filming it was fun, we got paid a little, and I got to wear a ridiculous gold chain.

It was for a real estate company, and the basic idea is that they show a slimy real estate agent sizing up the house and thinking of how much he’s going to rip off the client in order to make a high commission. Then the good guy real estate agent comes in and treats the customer properly. The director cast me as the slimy real estate agent, which surprised me since I NEVER get cast as the wacky role. When it comes to being cast, I figure I’ve got low-energy reasonableness locked up — or maybe resigned single dad — but not cartoonishly oily salesman. But this director wanted Will Hines — which made me think that either he’s a true comic genius who sees my inner character acting potential — or else he’s a terrible director and he just screwed his commercial by casting Bob Newhart in his main role.

Then I saw the costume — a too-tight shirt with the top button missing; Standard Slimy Gold Chain, too-big aviator glasses; horribly ornate wing-tip shoes — and I realized that I did indeed fit this part because I looked pathetic in the clothes. We made my hair especially comb-overy, and I spent all of Sunday strutting around a house and looking over my sunglasses right in the camera with a self-satisfied smirk. Very fun. The woman who gets ripped off was played by a girl who was in my Level One class at UCBT. And the good guy real estate agent is a former stockbroker from Florida who is trying to make it as an actor — from Florida! He flew up to be in this commercial! I was wondering if it was worth driving to New Rochelle from Brooklyn! I admire his persistence. He also had a voice like an DJ for an AM oldies station.

Dave and Greg were here Saturday. I took them to a brunch place here in Williamsburg, then the Tenth Street Baths, as I am wont to do when people are in town (or anytime I can convince someone to go with me, actually). They liked it as most people do. Then we had beers at a few places, ate an enormous burger while we saw the Jets lose on TV, and then went to Terry Jinn’s new improv show The Project, where I was in a ten-minute set. It was kinda like I dragged my college friends around NYC to show them what sort of world I live in now, which I hope was interesting for them. It could have been like being tediously dragged through someone’s photo album for 8 hours — but I’m going to assume they actually liked it. I thought I would feel terribly more self-conscious about having them here, feeling like I’m a self-indulgent failure when they’re socially acceptable with their wives and 2 children each. But it wasn’t like that. Then I was hoping they’d get really jealous of my awesomely free and artistic lifestyle. I don’t think that happened either.

Terry’s Project is a great show with a nice friendly vibe. For some reason, I couldn’t get a grip this past Saturday. I was having trouble figuring out what was going on in my improv scenes, even/especially my own moves! Maybe I shouldn’t do improv after a day of soaking in steam rooms and drinking beer. Best part of the show was sitting next to Armando Diaz. He laughed heartily often, although once after he let go with a really big guffaw I was startled and looked over at him in surprise. He saw me looking and quietly mumbled “I guess that wasn’t so funny.” Funny!

No cats in the blog today! Except this paragraph. Shit!

Monkeydick is undergoing big changes. I think. Yeah, I’m pretty sure.

The number of typos in my posts is disturbing. I was smart once, really.

So my sketch group Game Face has a show this Thursday. We cranked this one out to honor the president’s inauguration. It’s an instant sketch show, courtesy of us.

There’s a bunch of short, funny, smart stuff in this show. Standard ridiculous impersonations and wigs included.

The owner of the rescued cat called and claimed her. Apparently, she lives at a machine shop on the same block where we found her — she had slipped out the front door, crossed the street and hid in an alley. I can’t believe it! I’m very happy the lost cat is back at its home.

Also, my cats are suddenly totally more comfortable than they have ever been in my home. Maggie now likes to sleep on my desk while I work.

UConn friends Greg and Dave visit tomorrow. We can reminisce about the Huskies dream season of 1989-1990 and have intense discussions of which is the best album: Turnstiles, The Stranger or 52nd Street?

Cats and Billy Joel. I have become what I once so greatly loathed and feared: a product of Timid New England.

I got my headshots in. They look like headshots.

Hopped out of bed at the crack of 11:15am. I’m trying to round up a bunch of small free-lance web programming jobs to raise cash while I’m unemployed, or as I call it — well, to be honest I call it being unemployed. I thought I was going to have a clever term there and it didn’t happen.

Since leaving full-time work November 1st, I’m busier than I’ve ever been, and that’s WITH cancelling cable so I’m not watching television. I do waste a tremendous amount of time on email and AIM, but I’m also just plunging into the depths of honest-to-God workaholism. But without getting paid.

For free-lance work, I spoke with an academic friend of mine, who has hired me to do small tasks for his department’s on-line experiments. This last job was typical: they wanted a web site that shows pictures of a closed mousehole, a cat and a hunk of cheese at various intervals and the user is supposed to click the space bar only when they see cheese. I made it so the site flips between the pictures, and records when and how many times the user clicks the space bar. Riveting, I know, but I do actually enjoy making it work. They are the type of jobs I can finish in 1-2 days so there’s frequent satisfaction of “finishing” which you don’t get in full-time computer work.

On the creative side, my sketch group Game Face is gearing up for a show on Inauguration Night at UCBT. We did one during the Republican convention also so this will be our second all-political show — fascinating, since we never really write political material. My idea of a political sketch is to have Abraham Lincoln and a Pokeman arguing over who gets the last pack of Famous Amos from a vending machine. The other down side of these “instant shows” which Game Face often does is that we don’t have time to really polish anything. They’re usually decent ideas performed with great enthusiasm and about 80% of the lines memorized.

The good side is that Game Face gets to meet and throw out ideas, which always cheers me up, even though I never think it’s going to be productive. Last night, I walked in assuming doom, and then left giggling over Neil and Rob riffing about a sketch in which one guy during the civil war had a tank. That’s right, folks. You can see them lining up down 8th Avenue already.

Also, today I talked with a director of a commerical which I’m starring in Sunday. I love that sentence because it makes it sound so much more dramatic than it probably will be. In actuality, I feel like it’s a guy making a commercial for his mom. Or a guy who wants to break into advertising so he’s making something to put on his reel. At any rate, it was an audition, and I got it — which is thrilling no matter how tiny the cable channel is that shows it. I get to play a slimy real estate agent who fleeces a bunch of well-meaning customers. Then the real estate agent’s superheroic agent takes them under his protective wing, leaving me to wring my moustache. As Lord of the Straight Men, it will be a thrill to portray what I hope will be a cartoonishly ridiculous performance.

Oh, the cats? You thought you’d get out of this post without hearing about cats, Kevin and Brian? Not a chance! Despite shaking terribly on the way over, Hopey recovered from the vets much more quickly than Maggie. She had her womanhood torn away from her forever, but was over it by dinner. Maggie, however, now hates Hopey. She hisses at her and swats at her very viciously. I guess Hopey must smell different. She’s not that distrubed by the hissing — she just regards Maggie coolly and walks away. I think perhaps Maggie is not that bright.

But they both now like to sleep on my desk while I type, which is powerfully soothing as I write up my Lincoln-Pokeman sketch show.

“Free-lance creative type” — I think is a term David Spade used to describe his Dad’s lifestyle of never having a job and always bumming money from people. I think, anyway.

Here’s the cat we rescued on Friday. She’s not pregnant. No word from the owners. We’re going to put up some more posters today.

Also, I just dropped Hopey off at the vet. She hissed and fought just like Maggie did, but I was mentally prepared for it. When we got to the vet, Hopey was shaking very visibly in her carrier, wheras Maggie had been very still at that point. Poor Hopey.

One thing that’s happened with both cats is that whenever one has been at the vet, the OTHER becomes very friendly when they’re alone in the apartment. Maybe each becomes lonely. Or maybe each becomes thankful that I didn’t take her.

Yes, another cat story, but you’ll agree it’s worthy of an entry. I would elaborate on how I’m not going to let my life get taken over by cats except that it obviously already has. The world is transforming me into a crazy cat person. It’s only a matter of time before I become my vision of the Classic Cat Eccentric: 70 cats running around my living room, me wearing glasses with extra-large frames, and my current set of friends and interests replaced with an obsessively maintained stamp collection.

Anyway, I helped rescue a lost cat today, and I hope to God its owner comes looking for it.

Today was supposed to be a busy but leisurely day for me. I was going to revise my script for my five-minute pilot for Channel 102., go to an audition (rarity for low-energy non-expressive me), meet with Rob and Jeff about storyboarding that Channel 102, perform an improv show, and then in a skech showcase. I was also going to exchange my two small cat carriers for one big one, hoping that would make Hopey’s vet appointment on Monday less traumatizing. Busy it was. But it was not leisurely since I did all those things but also spent four hours trucking a lost cat around Williamsburg.

I was walking with my two cat carriers to the local pet store where I bought them. I was going to exchange it, and then go to the audition (also in my neighborhood) on the way home. But two blocks out of my front door, I heard a woman say to me:

“Excuse me, are there cats in those carriers?”

I thought she was going to berate me since I was carrying them straight up and down and I asssured her “No, they’re empty.”

And she said “There’s a lost cat here, and I think someone should take it to the adoption center.” She meant the pet store where I was already going, which also sometimes takes strays.

I really did not want to stop. I was cutting it close to make it to the store and then the audition, and I didn’t want to get mixed up with a stray cat. There’s TONS of stray cats in my neighborhood and you have to steel yourself and realize you can’t help them all. But how could I argue? I HAD two empty cat carriers IN MY HANDS. I was GOING to the pet center ANYWAY. I guess I’m not incredibly spiritual, but when Fate delivers a coincidence this precise right in my lap — I’m too superstitious to defy. So I begrudgingly agreed to take the cat.

The poor thing was quietly meowing and rubbing our legs. She was a huge friendly dark tortoise shelled colored girl — definitely a house cat and not a true stray. She had snuggled into a tiny, disgusting alley on North 10th street near Driggs Ave. filled with cigarette wrappers and deli coffee cups. When I set the carrier down and opened it, she crawled right in. Looking at the gouges on my hands that MY kittens had given me because of this carrier — I briefly considered keeping this cat and bringing my kittens to the alley. They’d probably love it — no people and plenty of paper scraps to scutter around the ground for all hours of the night.

14 blocks later, the adoption center said that the cat looked so clean that it had probably just escaped and I should bring it BACK to the alley since its owner would probably come looking for it. They also wouldn’t let me exchange the carriers. I went to the audition with the cat, thinking maybe the absurdity of showing up with a stray cat would charm the sure-to-be-arty casting people. It didn’t. I headed back to the alley, and called the woman, Shelly, who had found the cat to meet me, which she did.

We knocked on nearby doors — no one was missing a cat. Shelly asked a lot of the ipod-sporting, scruffy-haired ectomorphs that populate my neighborhood and who were walking by if they “knew someone who lost a cat.” Lots of bewildered head-shaking but no takers.

Shelly has lived here for 16 years, so she knew a bunch fo people and it quickly became a neighborhood mission, with an almost annoying hipster flair. A homosexual couple who ran a nearby art gallery printed out signs for us to tape up, which we did. The gaunt Australian clerks at the used vinyl record/CD store offered to house the cat “for one week max” and printed out MORE signs for us. Joan at the local pet store volunteered free litter and food for the record store guys. All we needed were the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to test for fleas, and we’d have our movie.

The record store guys were all cat lovers, and they were so impressed with my perseverance (I didn’t feel too generous — I was acting only out of fear of defying fate) that they told me to take a CD for free (David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, thank you very much.)

This all took about four hours. By then it was 7:15 and I was exhausted since I hadn’t eaten yet that day (ah, the diet of the unemployed). I went home and found that my car’s battery had died, took a fifteen minute nap and then left for my meetings and shows.

Shelly said at some point that she thought the cat might have been pregnant. I didn’t notice and hoped she was just being a doomsayer. But what if she is? Maybe someone abandoned their cat when it got pregnant? Or what if the owners don’t speak English, and therefore can’t read the signs we posted? In either case, no owner will come looking, and I’m going to have to find a home for this girl, which I promised the clerks I would do if no one called.

Anyone want a cat?

I am emotionally drained after getting Maggie spayed today. This is ridiculous. Clearly, I can not have children. If bringing a six month old mass of sentient fur out of my apartment for five hours leaves me like this, I can’t begin to imagine what it would feel like to know my child is about to have his first day of gym! Or God forbid, an Actual Problem of some relevance.

By the way, I swear this will not become one of those blogs that speaks only of cats. Maybe. I could make a category for “cats” on this blog. Organizationally, I probably should since there’s already at least 3 cat entries. But I refuse to admit that I’m talking about them that much, even though I am. It just happens there’s cat-heavy news recently, I’m going to tell myself.

See, I’m hesitant to admit it because I don’t want to be known as a cat person. Because you rarely hear anyone described as a cat person — they’re always “crazy cat people.” Perhaps I am a crazy cat person. I know I don’t seem like it to the outside world. I don’t have the energy, or whatever, of a cat person. I walk around all cool and shit; you’d never know. Yet my family grew up with cats. The Hines boys like cats. And I would go so far as to say that we’re good with cats. Sure, I treat them like little animate computer programs sometimes (“Fascinating. The cat prefers the wire hangar to the keys. I shall observe this further.”) But I love them and like knowing they’re happy in my home.

Also, cats are more my style than dogs comedically. Dogs: emotive, high-energy, mirroring. Cats: aloof, deadpan, perpetually commenting that the scene around them is nuts. Dogs would faithfully do celebrity impersonations. Cats sit back with a snide remark and raised eyebrow. If they had eyebrows. Dogs are Jim Carrey. Cats are Bob Newhart.

Anyway, today I was supposed to get Maggie and Hopey spayed, but I couldn’t get them both into carriers. Their appointment was 9:30. I was up at 8am. I had left the carriers out by their litter box, and left their food inside all week. They had been poking around them, and I foolishly thought it might be easy. But this morning, I scooped up Hopey, who instantly sqiurmed and gashed my hand with her paw and bit me, then took off — never to allow me to come within 2 feet of her the rest of the day. That was just trying to pick her up.

I spent another 20 minutes trying to get Hopey. Then I decided that I’d cancel the appointment and get a bigger carrier. Why a bigger carrier would help I don’t know now. But I searching for any excuse to not have to actually take them in. I called the vet, and the receptionist berated me:

“You can’t be nice. You can’t poo-poo them in. You have to just do it. Grab them by the scruff of the neck and drop them in butt-first.”
She sounded a bit fed up, and I suddenly felt bad for letting her down, not to mention a bit emasculated. I wanted to say that grabbing them by their neck sounded mean, but I felt like my manhood was now on the line.

Then Maggie, who had come to love being petted by me, sauntered right up to me, and I dutifully petted her for a few minutes. Then I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and lowered her in the carrier, butt-first. She was more terrified than I’d ever seen her. She started to squirm in the air, but when she was halfway into the carrier she figured out what was happening and really started to flail. I slammed shut the door, and locked it, sustaining just a few more small cuts. Maggie — without making a noise (she never meows) — scrambled around the carrier furiously. She stretched her arms through the gate and bit its bars. Her ears lay straight back and hissed a few times. She sounded like she was fighting for her life!

Hopey at first came up to inspect — I think she thought Maggie wanted to play — but then she sensed her sister was crying out for help and she loyally ran across the apartment and hid under my laundry. Maggie looked frantic. She won’t ever meow, but she mouthed “meow” at me, which broke my heart. I tried to lean over and talk to her, thinking my voice might calm her, but just backed away to the back of the carrier. and hissed. Angry, but now still.

I carried her outside — when the cold air hit her, she started a second round of scrambling — maybe she thought she was going to be let go outside? I drove to the vet’s. By the time we got there, she had calmed down — or more likely exhausted herself. I dropped her off and came back five hours later. They surgery went fine, but the slow-healing cut might mean there’s some condition where her auto-immune system isn’t 100% or something. I took her home and let her out, and she scrambled away and hid behind the bed.

I sat down, exhausted. I was really looking forward to sitting there and feeling sorry for myself for having to endure the stress, but unfortunately an enormous tsunami killed 200,000 people this week, and it sort of prevents me from taking any of my own problems too seriously. She’s a kitten, and she’ll be fine.

Though it’s sad to see her scared of me again. Just last night, she jumped up on the bed wanting to be pet for the first time. Now I can’t get near her, unless she’s tucked behind my headboard. I pet her a bit there when she first hid. I left a hunk of her favorite food in front of her face, which she would not eat in front of me, and a plate more of it on my pillow, which she ate when I was in the other room. I hope she forgets this and goes back to liking me pretty soon. What a lousy thing to have to do to scared kittens!

I suppose this is obvious, but the tortorous part is that you can’t explain to them what’s going on. In a strange way, it’s worse than when a person is sick, even painfully sick — since then you can talk it through.

And Monday I have to do it to Hopey. The one who is already more scared of me! Be prepared for another unnecessarily long description! Man, what a great blog!