Oh For A Muse Of Naps

Ok, well, if Carol's going to post about our moratorium on socializing and canoodling with the daylight, then so am I. Perhaps that's a churlish reason, but in truth my eyes and mind are as close to melting as hers and I need a break from thinking about these scripts we're shooting this weekend. It's going to involve dozens of performers. It's by far the most complicated shoot and post session we'll have had to date. But it's going to be hilarious...so it's hard to argue with why we're putting in so much work.

It's tricky enough figuring out the shot sequences. I really don't want to delve too far in to thinking about the editing, which Carol and I will most likely divvy up even-steven until it comes time for special effects...and then...have fun with your 8 point garbage matte, kiddo! I'll be in the other room, vlogging, blogging, and slogging through the next batch of nearly impossibly short films to create.

And believe me, I know, it's hard to stomach complaints from us. Think of it as catharsis if it helps then.

Yes, for a few months now our jobs have been, in various capacities, to write, shoot, perform in, and edit a number of short films and vlogs for Dotcomedy.com and Comedynet.com.

(A quick note to humor websites...the word comedy doesn't have to be in your url. Nobody who will wind up as part of your returning audience is the type to google-search for "comedy." You can call your site pretty much anything and if it's funny, like the man in the corn field says, they will come. Linens_N_Things.com doesn't sound funny but it might just be ironic. Note....given. Taken? Doooubtful.)

This isn't even including shorts we've made for the show we do on Monday nights with Ms. Winstead!While it's exhausting it's also been a great deal of fun. Our first short with comedynet for instance, MANSPIDER, debuted last Monday. Thanks to an unhealthy obsession with Spiderman and the wildly silly origin stories of so many of our favorite superheroes Drink At Work's been nurturing for a year or so, we wound up with three "spiderman"-related stories, MAN-SPIDER, MAN-MAN, and MAN-CYCLE, the last so ridiculous the entire short consists of two minutes of origin story with about 5 seconds of actual action. In addition to having made some great short films, I feel as if we've exorcised the need to satirize this one particular piece of our culture and we can now move about our mental cabins a bit more freely.

Plus, our hilarious and talented friends, who have all been gracious enough to work with us either for free or next to nothing and who consistently wind up improvising many of the highlights of these shorts, will walk away with a bevvy of professionally shot and edited short films starring them. So that's definitely a plus. Or at least we tell ourselves so the non-day-job survivor guilt doesn't eat away at us wholly.

The time-constraints do enough of a job pressuring us. As soon as one job is done, three others are already clambering at the door wondering why you won't let them in and start working on them. They sound almost hurt by the lack of response. If I could talk to them I'd speak to them as nurturingly and patiently as I did to my kids when I was a manny. I'd say, "Dear 2nd, 3rd, and 4th short films due this month...you need to know how very much I and Carol both love you. But right now, short film #1 is really having a tough time getting steady and we need to focus on it for a while. I promise though, as soon as #1 is all set, I'll take you all out for a day at the Final Cut Pro amusement park!"

The only other people I know putting in these kind of insane hours are my wunder-ex, Melinda Richards, who works for the best kids show on the planet as far as I'm concerned, the Wonder Pets, DAW's Corey Pandolph, and my writing partner Dan Bialek in L.A.

They're all really busy. Go ahead and talk to them. See if they sound whole.

There are chunks of all of us missing.

So while it's a good load better than dayjobbing it, Carol and I typically work 12-16 hour days and at any given time have at least 3 projects at different stages of production. Now if that's all that we had to contend with, we'd be fine. Tired but fine.

Fortunately/Unfortunately, when the flood gates open, they really open.

I recently booked a few commercials as well as a hosting job for one of an AMC's Date Nights, along with fellow comedy pals Sara Jo Alloco, Nick Stevens, and Baron Vauhgn. While that's all pretty wonderful, it's also time spent away from our video projects. Time that needs to be made up. At night. Late. Alone.

Well, not alone. With pizza. Pizza's always there. And Carol's working too, just in the other room. And as close as she is, she may as well be in Bangledesh--which is where I'm starting imagine her walk-in-closet-cum office tots off to at night. See even in our small company, we've outsourced. Globalization...it's inevitable.

So here I am working on my back-snapping weighty PC laptop, currently free from snapping duties as it rests on Carol's sturdy oak table. Which is nice of it, the table. I can't really hold extra weight at this point. The 10 pounds I've packed on from the super duo of high stress and sedentary work-life has usurped the previous role my laptop was playing as that of "cause of future slipped disc." Why outsource to a big heavy computer when you can just be big and heavy yourself? See, you can fight Globalization!

So as of now, Carol's finished up the rapture video which I can assure you is still funny--it's about a second mandatory rapture. She's out getting props for our shoots this weekend and I've got 15 windows open on my screen here as I attempt to find the DRINK AT WORK SHOW a new venue, memorize a piece for the weekly comedy show we do with Lizz, handle yet another in an unending series of family crises, work on the scripts for our next four shoots for next weekend, map out the production aspects of those shoots, start getting our September scripts/schedules in order, look up fun topics to vlog about for Monday, jot down a few new stand up ideas, Photoshop an image for a completely unrelated project, and then...at the end of today, I'll play 20 minutes of Halo 2 and fall asleep.

I don't want to buy Halo 3 until I can devote the kind of attention and love that one should always reserve for either potential spouses or first person shooter games.

But then, is there really any difference?