What I Expect From You

What I Expect From You.

A new blog. Outstanding. Exactly what the world needs.

I’m slowly moving out of my parent’s basement (MySpace blog) and setting up shop in a new apartment complex. I tried Tumblr, which has a nice clean interface and easy controls. It also has no indigenous comment system (I installed one, click the title to see the crappy version), so plan 'B' stands for Blogger.com. We'll sleep on google's couch until I can come up with a nicer pad.

Now, on to what this is all about.

Greetings. I am an actor by trade, a sci-fi geek by choice and a jackass by default. I’ve shuffled off my Sci-fi rants to a website called Slice of Scifi and they seem to be doing a good job of pissing off people. The personal life stuff will probably remain on Myspace, since it’s where my friends and my Mom tend to read them. That just leaves the acting stuff.

For a while I’ve fancied myself as a good actor. Recently I’ve also considered myself not only a good actor but a good blogger when it comes to acting. I recount my exploits and follies with humility and (possible) humor; all the while trying to actually impart what I’ve learned to those brave enough to follow me down this winding and whiny path. I dream of someday being an elder statesman of acting, lording above a young crop of attractive and talentless noobs, tugging at my pant leg for wisdom that I’ve dispensed for years via the Internet, then books and DVDs. it’s a power play for the later years in life, a golden parachute if the real dream of fame and fortune slips away.

And it’s humble beginnings are found here.

So, before I begin, let me tell you, gentle reader, what I expect of you.

FTW? What you expect of me, Mike! Outrageous! Overbearing! Bad form! Blogs are free and I have no obligation to you.

Nonsense. I’m not writing this blog entirely for my benefit. If I was, I’d take it off line, and you’d never know just how I really felt about the acting style of Mark Wahlberg (emoticon hint: :( ). In fact, this blog is built as a honeypot, a device to draw you in, get you to like me and eventually propel me to a successful acting career. Can you believe I’m telling you all this, upfront? How can you like me now?

Because I offer offer simultaenously the most valuable and worthless asset on the web: a truthful opinion. I have better things to do in my life than write gloss pieces about actors I like and movies that rock. Leave that to the bloggers that get paid under the table to whore themselves out (and they do).

Instead, I offer blow by blow recounts of blown auditions. I share the joy of booking a job. I peek under my hood to expose my acting process, or lack thereof. I give honest viewpoints about screenplays, directors and actors…some of whom I may be working for or with. In short, I put my intellectual property online and my career on the line and live to tell you about it.

So I want something back.

Here’s the deal, you can read these blogs for free right now. That’s right, you pay nothing. In exchange, all you have to do is this: Make me famous.

That should be my job, right? I’m the God-damned actor, find the jobs myself, right.

Yep.

Still, the deal is this: make me famous.

How do you do it?

Don’t know. At least not completely. I suspect that the best thing you can do now is read my blog and when you like something about it, email it to a friend. If they do the same and so on, some day I might have a lot of people following this blog. When that happens, then the “Creatives” (directors, writers, ad agencies) start to take notice. Always eager to jump on the bandwagon, they could - and I emphasize the word ‘could’ - help me do what I’ve set out to do: be famous.

At least that’s the initial plan. but here’s the exciting second part of reading this blog: you get to be a part of the process. See, if this was a diary that I’d written and you stumbled across it 100 years from now, you’d be a passive reader. This would either be worth a lot of money because I single-handed became famous, or it would be the worthless ramblings of a fool. But we’re in the present and you’re on the web, which means that you can interact with me. I’m all for that. I’m giving you stock in the company of me and as a shareholder, you can make suggestions. I offer my career to you in exchange for your occasional attention. Not a bad deal.

So if you’ve made it to this point in the blog, you’re either with me, or you’ve skimmed. Huzzah, to you, friend. Click the RSS feed and get your notifications when I cast my brilliance upon this fertile web plot. Shaudenfreude or success, either way it will be a fun ride.