willhines.net

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.