Bob & Andrew – Season 1

While I am not an actor by trade, on several occasions I have plowed the depths of my soul and harvested the raw emotions necessary for the stage. Sure, most of those times I was playing a stupider version of myself, stumbling quietly through words I had written while wearing clothes I usually wore, but it was still hard work.

The premise of Bob & Andrew is pretty simple: two buddies- one straight and one gay- attempt to solve their relationship troubles.  Here’s a playlist of season one. Stick with it; Bob can act well, while mine improves somewhere around episode 3.

An open letter to Chad Kroeger

Dear Mr. Kroeger

Look, I don’t care for your music. I’ll come right out and say that. I think your lyrics are awful and your power chords sound like someone asked a Metallica cover band to “play it shittier” and they jumped at the chance. Sure, a long time ago I absolutely paid money to see your band perform live but that was only because I was an impressionable teenager in a northern podunk town who had yet to discover any music outside of what the local radio played and desperately sought the approval of his peers.  The way I look at it, I gave you forty dollars about 13 years ago so you can give me ten minutes of your time while you sit and listen to your personal assistant read this letter out loud to you*.

I moved to a more blue-collar, red-necky sort of town over the summer and with the acquisition of my own personal automobile, terrestrial radio is back in my life. This is where I first heard your new single “Edge of a Revolution”, and trust me when I say I couldn’t smash the dial to left fast enough. It needs some work. I wish to submit my humble critique and rewrite. Perhaps when your agent calls Pharrell’s agent about a possible collaboration and remix, this will come in handy.

All I ask for in compensation is one million dollars cash and to be a fly on the wall at your inevitable divorce proceedings.

FURTHER excerpts from an unfinished novel

In 2009 I was really good at staying up all night while drinking beer and writing short stories. Over one particularly productive weekend, I scraped together 130 000 words about a guy who decides to drink himself to death after he accidentally causes his best friend to be murdered by methamphetamine dealers.

It’s juvenile, crass and tries too hard. Below are two chapters, unedited and out of context.

Finish your novels, kids

Hope is for presidents and dreams are for people who are sleeping*

Last night I dreamed I was soldier. I was embedded in a unit with friends from various social groups from every time in my life. Both men and woman whom looked exactly as I remembered them from when I knew them: high school chums I haven’t seen since, classmates from film school, all sorts of coworkers, and even some of my current, long-distance pals**. Though many have neither crossed paths nor even have been be aware of the others’ existence, we were a tight-knit group out on a mission***.

Of course the super-ego left me in charge: I led my troops through an eastern-European village of rolling hills, quaint chateaus and buxom townswomen who welcomed Anglo intervention. If we’re using Inception logic- and there’s no reason not to- I’ll blame this on a recent viewing of Saving Private Ryan. The troops marched on while smoking cigarettes, chatting about whatever was waiting for them back home. Suddenly, the guy that I worked with at McDonalds ten years ago- the one who loved Rammstein, smoked pot before, during and after his shift, and made the absolutely best custom chicken sandwiches****- stops dead in his tracks. There’s a red dot, a sniper’s marker on his chest. We all freeze and watch as the dot dances around his chest- and down to the crotch- finally resting right between his eyes. A bullhorn sounded and suddently his head evaporated like burst balloons filled with maraschino cherry juice. Someone yelled “Sweet sassy molassee!”