Will Hines Dot Net

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So the warm-up works like this: everyone stands in a circle except one in the middle. That person approaches someone in the outer circle and demands “Give me back my son!” with complete dramatic commitment — inspired by Mel Gibson’s over-dramatic delivery in the movie Ransom — trying to get the outer circle person to laugh. It’s to practice emotional commitment and also making your teammates laugh — two valuable skills.

Pete Bosniak brought that into Monkeydick one day (apparently he and his Philly crowd would do this for fun or something), and I started teaching it to groups I was coaching. Anyway, Chris Gethard (he’s wearing the blue ‘Smurfs’ t-shirt) made the above montage — made all the more awesome as it is presented without any real explanation. It’s hilarious and captures the weird fun of the warm-up perfectly. Sue Galloway (number 2) is the only person who I’ve seen do this and never, ever break.

I called Pete to let him know his warm-up was becoming legendary. He said that was “dope” or something (See, Pete is a DJ), but he said that his Philly friends have added a twist where the person is allowed to respond “Not Without My Daughter!” a la Sally Field. A funny idea but I had a class try that and it ruins the drama somehow. Sorry Pete!

I subscribe to podcasts from This American Life, Radio Lab, Kasper Hauser, They Might Be Giants and Elvis Costello — with dozens more waiting for me to simply click on “subscribe.” My friends are prolific video makers. Sitting beside my bed are books by David Mitchell, Jorge Luis Borges, Charles Dickens and George Orwell. Also comics by Bryan K. Vaughn, Steve Ditko and Alan Moore. On my table are CDs by Buffalo Springfield, Prince and New Order, as well as a few mix CDs. I’m performing one sketch show and writing another. Netflix is sending me “Carnal Knowledge” and “An Inconvenient Truth” tomorrow. I’ve yet to watch any episodes of “The Wire,” “Battlestar Galactica” or any reality show starring or not starring Scott Baio.

You’re all going through similar things, I’m sure. So what do you do?

Unrelated:

• 200 Bad Comics — funny.
• My cat choked up a hairball the size of a mouse while sitting in front of me. It was like a monster movie — I thought for a second it was an alien crawling out of her mouth.
• One week until I see The Police.

So anyway there’s a very real possibility that I could be prominently featured in a commercial on MTV wearing a super-gay leather cowboy outfit in the next few weeks. I auditioned for the role of “Creepy Guidance Counselor” a few weeks ago. In the waiting room at the audition place were a bunch of people from (according to the sign-in sheet) “Funny Face Casting.” They all indeed had funny faces — cartoonishly big ears, silly grins, crazy eyes, etc. But my natural creepiness beat out their creepy bone structures and I was cast for the role. “Perfect — really creepy,” said the director after my audition.

He also asked “Would you mind wearing a leather cowboy outfit?” And I responded “Fine with me” mostly because I didn’t really understand what he said, and I couldn’t imagine having a problem with any kind of outfit. I just like being cast in these things — they’re fun; it’s a little extra money. At the shoot, I first read my lines as a creepy guidance counselor wearing the suit I had brought. Then the director said “Ok, good — now bring out the cowboy outfit.” And they brought out the gayest leather cowboy outfit I could imagine with an intentionally-small cowboy hat, which I dutifully put on.

“So this is what you asked me,” I said to him. “Was there anyone at the audition who said they wouldn’t wear it?” He replied “You’re the only one I asked. Your delivery was so creepy it made me think of this.” As someone who has fought to become a better actor, I was flattered to have stirred a response of any kind, but it was disturbing to see that there’s something about me that can easily read as “into leather cowboy outfits.”

During the shoot, the director said “We’re gonna show mostly you in a business suit, but I’m thinking we might have subliminal flashes of you in this cowboy outfit, like in Fight Club.” But I ran into the director a few days ago and he showed me the rough cut. It’s more like 90% cowboy outfit, with a brief flash of me in a suit. As a friend of mine pointed out, I now know what it’s like to be a starlet in a horror film who’s told “Just do the bathtub scene — we’ll hardly show anything.”

Except that I don’t really mind. The outfit looked hilarious! If I get stereotyped as “Guy to Play Creepy People” — eh, I’ve had worse jobs!

There are five short 1950s Jack Kirby comics stories available at Scans Daily. When you’re telling a whole story in four pages or so — you don’t waste a whole lot of time justifying things. Check out this awesome wackiness from “The Face Behind The Mask”:

Via Journalista, as usual.

Wednesday July 11 at 7pm at UCBT:
DeCoster and Hines in
7 Fights: A Sketch Show About Winning
Directed by Dyna Moe
$5

plus plus

equals

Does anyone have a black turtleneck shirt I could borrow for a rehearsal on Sunday (july 15th) and a show on Monday (16th)?

Other notes:

• The book purge is going well. However, other aspects of my purge are not. I threw out an old computer and vacuum cleaner on Friday night, then woke up Saturday morning to discover someone in the middle of the night had smashed them and strewn the parts all across the street. So they weren’t picked up by the garbage men. How uncivil of everyone.
• I saw Children of Men on DVD. Loved it!
• DeCoster and I have a sketch show Wednesday at 7pm. Info to come later today.

Ok, I’ve cleaned out another two shelves worth of books. If you want any and are someone that I run into, claim dibs. Basically, I’m getting rid of books that I’ll either never read again (Lonely Planet: Antarctica) or that I can easily get again (Gulliver’s Travels).

My neighbor snatched the PKDs already. “What?” think my beleaguered friends. “We had to hear you talk about PKD for a year and now you’re just getting rid of those books?” Well, yeah. I’ve decided that my bookshelf is primarily for what I WANT to read, not what I’ve already read.

Check ‘em out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/williebhines/sets/72157600651831985/

A podcast about New Jack Swing, the movement championed by Bobby Brown, Heavy D and the Boys and other things.

http://www.prefixmag.com/features/P/prefix-podcast/588

These songs are good or at least really fun.

Separately, it’s time for another book/CD purge in an effort not to become a compulsive hoarder. I’ll try to have pictures of books available sometime next week.

I usually watch movies from 11:30pm until about 1am. Monday night I put in Donnie Darko. I got about 10 seconds into the MENU SCREEN for the DVD before I was too creeped out to continue. I’ll try watching the actual movie later in the week when it’s daylight.