Just a Geek (4 page)

I've just come home from the San Diego ComiCon, where it's very possible I gave you a lame flyer for this very lame website.

So you actually came, eh? Suh-weet. I feel just slightly less lame than I did last night.

Want to know some cool stuff that's happened in the recent past?

Tough. I'm telling you anyway.

Here we go:

See, TNN is re-branding themselves. Re-branding is when a network changes its image and programming and goes after a new audience. Well, that's what TNN is doing. I guess someone decided that there were more Gen-X-ers than rednecks out there (thank god) and they've changed The Nashville Network (home of
NASCAR
and
Hee-Haw
) into The National Network (home of
Miami Vice
,
Starsky and Hutch
,
NASCAR
and
Hee-Haw
and
Star Trek: The Next Generation
).

So this is quite cool, if you ask me. I've been doing lots of stuff with the TNN folks in the last few days and they are really some of the coolest people on earth. And I'm not just saying that because they gave me a free trip to New York. Okay, well, maybe a little.

But check this out: There is this big thing called "The Television Critics Association." I think there are TV critics in it, or something. Anyway, they get together every year to run up huge tabs on their corporate credit accounts and see what's coming up on TV in the next quarter. That's where I come in. TNN asked me to go to the "TCA" (when you're a hip, edgy, media-savvy person, you use lots of acronyms, FYI) to be part of this
TNG
launch-thing. So I went and it was sooo cool! I got to see some of the old
TNG
kids, who I don't ever see anymore since they're millionaires and I'm living in a refrigerator box and the coolest thing of all . . . I got to take a pee right next to BILLY FREAKIN' IDOL!!!

Yes, you read that right. Here's how it happened: I went into the bathroom and I'm doing my business and I notice the guy next to me is rather dressed up, like in serious rocker clothes. So I try to just glance at him, without getting all gay and weird and he looks right at me, sneer and all. That's when I realize that it's HIM! HOLY CRAP! So I say, "My wife and I just saw you on
Storytellers
. You really rocked, man!" (tap, tap). And he looks at me and from behind his cool-guy sunglasses says, "Cheers, mate." And he's gone.

YES! How cool was that?

So after that, I'm off to New York to do a cool show called
Lifegame
, which will be on TNN in a month or so. It's an improv show where they asked me to tell stories about my life and then they have improvisers act out scenes based on my so-called life, in different styles. Like the time my parents cornered me in the bathroom and gave me "The Talk" . . . when I was 20, done as a reggae musical. Very funny. And I got to play the Devil in a scene. YES!

While I was there, I got a tour of MTV networks, met Carson Daly (!) and was given a CHIA MISTER T! That's right. Let me tell you, everything after that was just Jibba Jabba.

So after NYC, I came home to LA, my wife picked me up at the airport and I got on a train to San Diego for the Comic-Con, where I signed autographs and promoted
TNG
on TNN (I like that. It sounds like NBA on NBC) and this lame website. Honestly, it was mostly lame. I didn't sell many pictures, so I barely even covered my costs for the trip and there weren't as many people there as last year. HOWEVER! There were a few cool things, which I will relate now:

I met Oscar Gonzalez. He's an artist for Bongo Comics, who make "The Simpsons" comic. He drew, for me, a picture of me signing autographs for THE COMIC BOOK GUY! It's totally cool. I'll scan it at my brother's house and post it this week sometime. Two other cool guys, Jason Ho and Mike Rote, also Bongo artists, did cool Simpson's caricatures of Ryan and Nolan (my stepkids). Thank you Bongo guys!

I also met Spike, of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, (the first guys to recognize Mike Judge's brilliance in the pre-Beavis days), and did a little sound bite for their 25th anniversary special, so Spike gave me an autographed DVD of their greatest sick and twisted hits. Cool!

My buddies at TROMA, home of the Toxic Avenger and distributor of
Fag Hag
also gave me some DVDs, including
Terror Firmer
. Very cool.

Finally, I traded an autographed picture of yours truly for a copy of "College Girls Gone Wild." You know the one you see on TV? Trading things is cool.

That's it, kiddies. I'm back in LA now and getting ready for my Big Birthday Bash next weekend. I'm turning 29 on the 29th! YES!

Your punching bag,

Littlest Giant

I am so embarrassed when I read that and compare it to the way I write now. It's a horrible mangling of the English language, I change from present to past tense and back again, and use an annoying passive voice throughout the whole thing. Oh, and all the ComicCon stuff is bullshit. I may have been at the keyboard, but Prove To Everyone That Quitting
Star Trek
Wasn't A Mistake was definitely in the driver's seat, so I projected my idealized self: I was a devil-may-care Gatsby, funny and irreverent, and living the celebrity dream.

ComiCon was nothing like I had expected, and the truth is, it was a horrible experience. I went there expecting to sell hundreds of autographed pictures to hundreds of adoring fans, but hardly anyone was interested. I sat in a cavernous and undecorated area far away from the main convention floor, surrounded by people who were definitely on the downside of their careers. The hundreds of adoring fans I'd hoped to see did show up . . . when people like Kevin Smith and the cast of the short-lived
Witchblade
took up temporary residence at tables near mine. When they left, so did the fans, who glanced dismissively at me, if they noticed me at all. I was humiliated and depressed.
"This is what my life has come to,"
I thought, "
I am a has-been."
Prove To Everyone made sure I left those details out, and encouraged me to play up the success of the TCA event and the subsequent trip to New York for
Lifegame
. So that's what I did. (By the way, it
was
pretty cool to take a pee next to Billy Idol. If you get a chance to pee next to a rock star, make sure you do it.)

Though the dishonesty bothered me, Prove To Everyone spoke with a silver tongue, and I convinced myself that if I projected a successful image, it would somehow become a reality. It was a lot of work to fictionalize my own life, though, so I wrote about things that were safe and mundane. I posted links to other websites and talked about my experiences building my self-described "incredibly lame website." I issued pathetic pleas for e-mail and comments, but I avoided talking about myself or revealing anything too personal. That all changed when my dad came home from a surfing trip in Indonesia. He was so sick I thought he was going to die.

^[
2
^]
This is detailed in
Appendix A
.

^[
3
^]
As you'll see, having something to prove to people was a major motivating factor in my life right up until about a year ago.

27 JULY, 2001

Surfer Rosa

I just got back from the hospital. My dad is really sick and the scary thing is nobody knows what the hell is wrong with him.

I can talk to someone, in real time, who is on the other side of the world.

Spacecraft are taking pictures of Mars.

My Palm Pilot has more memory than my first desktop computer.

But not one doctor can tell me what the %^$#@ is wrong with my dad.

I've been on the verge of tears all day.

Sorry, kids. I know you've come to expect a certain irreverence from your Sweet Uncle Willie, but I am scared shitless.

I love my dad. I've never known my dad as much as I wanted to, because he works all the time and I work all the time. Then there's the whole "You don't understand me!" thing, which basically adds up to a bunch of wasted years from 14 to about 22. **Pay attention, young 'uns: your parents are not as bad as you think and someday they'll be gone and you'll regret every single moment you wasted being mad at them because they wouldn't let you go to your fuck-up friend's house because they knew you'd get drunk there.**

I remember, when I was a little kid, like 7 or 8, my great-grandfather died. I was in the kitchen of my house and my dad was sitting on this high-chair stool thing we have and he started to cry. Like really a lot. He cried hard. I was freaked. I didn't know what to do. At all. So I ran into the laundry room and I said, "Mom. Dad needs you." My mom came into the kitchen and she did what I just didn't know how to do at 7 or 8: she hugged my dad and let him cry on her. I can see the two of them, my dad in his ultra-groovy 1979 perm and my mom in her pantsuit, holding each other in the beautifully wallpapered kitchen in Sunland.

Later, I asked my dad why he was crying so hard. I had hardly known my great-grandfather and he was cool and all, but I just figured that if I didn't know him that well, nobody else did, either. (Yes, the world did revolve around me, apparently.) My dad told me that he was thinking about his own dad, my grandfather and how my grandfather was so sad, because his own father had just died. My dad then told me that he realized then, for the first time in his life, that someday his dad would die. Even at 7 years old that really struck me and I think about it all the time.

A number of years ago, when I was working on
Mr. Stitch
in France I awoke with a start one night. I thought "something horrible has just happened" and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I called my friend Dave and told him what had happened and asked if there had been an earthquake, or something. He told me I was just being lame (I am) and that everything was fine. So I went back to sleep. Later that night, as I was going out the door of my apartment to dinner, my phone rang. It was my mom. She made some small talk, then told me that my dad wanted to talk to me. He got on the phone and told me that his dad, my grandfather, had suffered a massive heart attack and died. I didn't know what to say. I asked him how he was doing and he choked back a sob and said, "sometimes okay and sometimes not." I had no comfort to offer my dad and that really bothered me.

Months later, we had a funeral and scattered my grandfather's ashes out to sea. It was really cool and I cried really hard, but not for myself. I cried for my dad, remembering what he had told me 15 years earlier.

So tonight, I spent as long as I could at the hospital, talking with my dad, reading my lame HTML book and watching
Blind Date
and
Letterman
. I kept taking his temperature, which started out at 103 today (scary, since my dad's 53), then went back to normal and started a slow climb back up to 100.6 when I left.

I don't know what to do now. I know I won't sleep well, not knowing what's happening with my dad. The doctor will be calling in someone from the CDC in the morning if my dad's not better, since he was just in Indonesia on a surfing trip and they think he may have brought something back.

But it's the not knowing that is the worst.

That and replaying in my head every wasted moment with my dad. Every time I wouldn't play catch with him, or go surfing, or acted embarrassed when he told a lame joke around some girl I was trying to impress.

Go call your mom. She's worrying about you.

And for god's sakes, play catch with your dad.

For the longest 48 hours of my life, I was terrified that I was going to lose my father. After two days, the doctor from the CDC determined that my dad had contracted a blood infection when he stubbed his toe on a boat anchor during his trip. If he hadn't been in the United States when he'd gotten sick, he would have died. Thankfully, he managed to fight off the infection and made a full recovery.

I still don't know why I chose to write about my dad, and my very real and unprotected feelings, but when I was face to face with my father's mortality, Prove To Everyone was silenced and releasing my fears and doubts was liberating.

The few people who were reading my website appreciated the raw honesty. In the days after I wrote that entry, I got several e-mails and comments from people who shared similar experiences with their own fathers, and while I read them, I thought that it might be okay to talk about some of my real feelings.

"As long as you don't let on about how much you're struggling in your career,"
Prove To Everyone said.

"Oh, you're still here,"
I said.
"I thought you'd found something else to do."

"I think I'll be sticking around for quite some time,"
he said.
"With The Voice of Self Doubt to keep us company."

He was right. After that brief moment of honesty, Prove To Everyone regained control over everything I wrote and I was back to attention whoring and posting links to other websites. About two weeks later, Prove To Everyone and I sort of collaborated on a weblog post. He got to talk about Auditions, and I got to talk about my family.

02 AUGUST, 2001

Beach-o-rama

Tuesday was my stepson's 12th birthday. It was also the first time in 3 months that I'd had an audition. (Apparently, a bunch of jackass producers, working for vertically integrated, multinational media conglomerates were afraid that the Writer's Guild and the Screen Actor's Guild may want to stop work, so that we can all make a living wage, so they didn't "green light" any new projects. Go figure.)

Things have been tough the past few months. Money has been tight and I've been super bored. If I didn't have my kick-ass sketch comedy show at ACME to look forward to, I probably would have ended up on the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room.

Just kidding. Jeeze, lighten up.