This week has been a mite wonky.  Full transparency, I’m falling into old habits.  I am aware and conscious of this and am actively working to fix that.  I’ve been taking care of a few things while I have some money.  And now I’m typing with some gloves on.  They’re pretty thick so, I’m impressed I’ve typed so well just now.  Ok, now back to work.  I don’t actually have anything right now.  This may be a short post.  By the way, if anyone has a topic they’d like to read here just feel free to reach out with the contact page.  Otherwise, more likely than not, I’ll just be writing about whatever old TV I’m watching.

     That said, I hadn’t watched The League in quite awhile so, that’s what I’ve been watching the last couple days.  Just starting season four right now.  One of the funniest shows not about football.  There are times I wonder if I were ever to have a child whether I name them Chalupa Batman.  I’m not saying I want to name a child Chalupa Batman but I would like to always have the option.  

     In any case, I need to wrap this soon so I can make the deadline to post this on Thursday and right now I have about twenty minutes.  I’ll be better prepared for Tuesday.

The other day I woke up to an episode of Stargate SG-1 and I was reminded just how talented a performer is Michael Shanks.  The episode is titled Lifeboat.  The episode starts with the team investigating a crashed ship.  While looking at equipment determined to stasis devices Shanks’ character Daniel Jackson is hit with some kind of energy wave.  He regains consciousness and starts presenting unusual behavior, speaking in a manner not at all Daniel Jackson.  Throughout his run on SG-1 he voiced the character Thor, and portrayed the character Ma’chello as both Ma’chello himself and Ma’chello inhabiting Daniel Jackson’s body.  An interesting piece of work. He’s even portrayed very difficult conditions that are always hard for me to watch because his performance was extraordinarily close to my own experience.  Now, in Lifeboat, Shanks portrays something like four or five different and distinct characters with rapid switches from one character to another.  Some people would think “He’s an actor, that’s his job.” and other things to try and diminish this statement but watch a few people try and do this and then watch Shanks’ performance in this episode and then tell me with a straight face that this performance isn’t top three at the very least.  Also, I just watched a clip of his interview on Dial the Gate where he shares a life-or-death experience from his time on SG-1.  And for the record, I say all this being SUPER jealous that he’s married to Lexi Doig.

     Now, back to our regularly scheduled…my bitching and whining I guess.  But not so much!  I’m getting my affairs in order here so I’ll be able to cut my ties to this shithole state and get moved within the next month.  It’s again an odd sensation knowing my net worth isn’t in parentheses.  I need to start seriously packing, though.  I still need to figure out how best to transport some things like my production desk in the studio.  I’m sure I’ll have to dismantle it to some extent.  The thing is that I’ve cobbled together certain pieces to accommodate the equipment and the furniture components are differently shaped, let’s say.  The more I think about it the more it seems I’ll just have to disconnect everything and pack up all the equipment normally and then reassemble everything later.  It’s not a terrible thought in any case it’s just tedious.  And not knowing exactly where I’ll end up ultimately, it’s difficult to visualize how I’ll reestablish the studio right now.  Nonetheless, I can’t wait to be back home.

     I spent many of my teen years walking three miles of Van Nuys Blvd. in the middle of the night, going to In-N-Out Burger to feed myself when my “mother” couldn’t be bothered.  I look forward to being able to visit that same institution regularly again.  A place where I experienced so many good times, find solace from the bad times.  My friends and I celebrated and commiserated so much there.  One place I truly hold sacred.  And then time cherished loved ones and all that.  Just one more month in my exile.

God damn it!  I had a thought of what I was going to write here and then I fell asleep.  And then I woke up and forgot what it was.  It’s still buggin’ the shit out of me!  What the hell was it?!  Meh, whatever.  Alright, I guess I feel like talking about TTRPG stuff.  One of my favorite parts of TTRPGs is character creation.  I’m sure most players are familiar with the process in Dungeons & Dragons.  I have a few preferences in that game but I prefer random generation to avoid repeating my preferences and biases.  I don’t think I’ve seen a good random generator for D&D or at the very least, I can’t think of one at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night.  My favorite game however, the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, had the best character system baked into it.  I put together some screens to further expedite the process.  I even have it saved on all my devices so it can be easily copied into the notes app.  Then one can simply throw dice and mark the results on the note images.  Then you just jump onto behindthename.com to randomly generate the name and biographical information.  I’ve been using this process to create NPCs for years.  There again, the character creation in that system was designed for randomization.  Most games are a little bit trickier to this end.

     The new Marvel Multiverse RPG (MMRPG) is a great system overall.  I’ve acclimated to the power system in this game.  I’ve been vocal about my feelings on the super powers of this game, which were not so much positive at first but I’ve worked out how to do some things that were more nuanced from the older game.  I’ve worked out a method for randomly generating characters for the MMRPG system.  I use an app called Characterize.  It lets you make your own generators.  You make an item to generate and within that item you type in all the possible results for that item.  For example: the item is a four-sided die.  You name the item d4.  And then within that field you enter: 1,2,3,4 .  So, you tap the button and it randomly selects one of those digits.  The generator I put together for this game I built with four fields; Rank, Origin, Occupation, and then I added to that the first power set.  I’ve found that randomly choosing a power set to kick off the character’s powers is more efficient for me to branch out and try other powers I don’t often use for my characters.  And then I use behindthename.com for the rest normally.  There are still numerous factors that can’t really be generated randomly and active decisions need to be made so, the process still takes some time to complete the character.  All said and done, It works very well and is fun for me as I create numerous NPCs.

     Feel free to reach out with questions, suggestions, or just to chat.  I’m going to set up a discord server connected to all this.  I guess that would be more accessible for things like this.  Until next time.

Just a couple more days now.  I’ll have some things completed and be closer to getting the money I’ve been waiting on.  Then I can get the last few things I need to finish packing.  So far, I have three full pages toward my first hour.  I am a little concerned about that.  Three pages is a concise summation of a good portion of my material so, I may need to somewhat less concise to that point.  On the bright side, I just got home from an open mic and played a fairly particular bit about artie.  I ate shit but true to form, the moment I sat down, I realized that I missed a line that could’ve improved my early momentum in the first minute.  I’ll tighten up the language later.  I know it’s a good bit I just need to better position it with other material.  I’ll be sitting down and tracking back through my material tomorrow.

     Today was a stupid and very bad day for a very specific reason.  I try very hard to avoid politics on here but especially now, it really can’t be avoided.  Suffice to say that I don’t support rapists nor white supremacists.  I don’t support racists in general and as a rule.  That’s all for that.

     Back to more fun things.  I’ve really missed going out to open mics.  It’s a special kind of fun to eat shit when you think you’re funny.  And it’s equally a special kind of triumph when you eat shit playing a bit you know is funny and then later redeem it with getting the laughs you know it deserves.  My first time on stage, at my very first open mic, I played a bit I knew was funny.  The first or second bit I wrote.  The room that night was rough.  Twelve people in the room, ten of them on the list, the two most seasoned performers got the only laughs, and I followed one of them.  I ate my dick in that three minutes and then went to the next mic, and then the one after that, and keep going out to mics three or four nights a week for about two, two and a half years.  Then there was an open mic with a packed house.  A dozen or so comics, another two dozen audience members, it was a green house so the acoustics were fantastic.  I forget why I thought this but I decided driving to that venue that I was I going to play that first bit.  I got up for my set.  I called out the bit up front.  I said that it was my first bit on a stage, that it flopped that first time and that it was time to play it again and see if it really sucked.  I did the bit, as scripted, pitched perfectly…  And yes, I destroyed the room that time.  Landing that bit that time was far and away much better than most of the sex I’ve gotten.  I’ve survived my own attempts to kill myself and you may know some of my experience with my “mother”.  Redeeming that bit in that moment, top ten happiest moments of my life.

Say, look at that!  I managed to successfully post twice in one!  Just like I said I would.  Looks like I’m not a total flake after all.  That said, I still don’t have any idea what I’m writing about even three sentences in.  Fine, two and a half, dick.  I’ve spent most of today instead doing the things I planned to, looking at apartments online.  I think, to be safe, I have to plan on moving down in February.  I’ve been thinking a lot about how to rebuild the studio when I get moved in.  In most cases, I’m thinking I’ll just use the bedroom in whatever place and plan on sleeping on whatever couch I get.  It’ll simple enough to just use the bedroom to store and equipment and game stuff and just treat the rest of the place as my ‘living space’.  I can’t wait to find a group of people who will show up to play games and record podcasts.  Now, were I to find my ideal place, it would be a rundown old garage or cool old store front that I could easily build an apartment into.  You know, like Flynn’s in TRON, or Dumont’s old garage in TRON Legacy.  And noooo, not ALL of perceptions are filtered through TRON.  But sure, most of my perceptions are.  I’ve always loved TRON.  Far and away among my most favorite things almost my entire life.

     I’m starting on season two of The Drew Carey Show while I catch up on some writing from yesterday.  Turns out I fucked up the math when I worked out the count goals for my book I’m writing.  So, now I need to write up an actual outline and figure out how I’m going to fill in space.  So, of course right now I want to pick up my Spillane biography and finally read it for inspiration but sure enough, I packed up all my books first thing.  And that one is most likely in the case on the bottom of the stack.  And it turns out that books are heavy.  Anyway, if anyone in the LA area has any leads on some places like I mentioned, I’d really appreciate to hear them.  I’ve found some places online that would make a great studio, I just need to figure out how to pay for one of them and then a private apartment built into it.  I’m getting a grasp on zoning regulations in LA County.  I think what I’m looking for is a space zoned MR1.  I’m pretty sure that would let me do some light manufacturing like with my resin work and use it as a studio space for filming, and then have on the premises a residence.  How great would that be?