10:37 am - Thurs 3/29/07
Can't Touch This

For those "regulars" who enjoy it when I'm "regular"--about writing in here--I apologize for being away this long (I have my own experiences with becoming "invested" in someone's blog, only to have them become frustratingly sporadic--or stopping altogether--so I "feel your pain". Or at least your mild discomfort).

(And now on to our show...)

I have my second commercial audition of the week this afternoon--for Johnsonville Brats--and there's the possibility of a couple callbacks tomorrow (for a "Harry Potter" videogame, and a Father's Day spot for Hallmark), so things have picked up a bit from the previous two weeks.

The Hallmark spot falls pretty solidly under the heading "Be Careful What You Wish For"; they were looking for "dads" who could dance like MC Hammer (for a fantasy-sequence recreation of the "U Can't Touch This" video).

For awhile now, I've thought (and have told people) that my ability to "dance" would at some point get me a commercial as an unlikely-looking dancer (Cause I've seen those sort of commercials before--spots for IPOD, Ebay, and Visa immediately come to mind).

Anyway, JS called me a couple days ago, asking if I thought I could do the dance if a choreographer taught to me (There's going to be four days of rehearsal before the shoot). And I said--with some comical trepidation--that I thought I could, if I didn't die first in the attempt (If you remember the video, the dancing is pretty energetic).

So he submitted me for it.

But when I got the email notice about the audition, it said they wanted you to come in knowing the dance, so the day before, I downloaded the video off YouTube.

And I realized something--I'm old.

I still have a great sense of rhythm. I still have a great sense of showmanship. And I still move really well...from about the hips on up.

But what I don't have is aerobic endurance (The song is over four minutes long, while I'm good for--maybe--a minute or so of full-out dancing). Leading me to wonder how I'd make it through four days of rehearsals and a day's shooting.

What I don't have is flexibility(At two separate points in the video, "Hammer" does a backbend, touching the floor with his right hand and pushing himself back up; if I tried that, something would snap off).

What I don't have is footwork (And that's almost all he does in the video--the "running man", the spins, that sideways scuttle back-and-forth that's probably his best-known move). I used to at least be able to "spin"--one of my "influences" was Michael Jackson, after all--but that skill is long gone.

And at the audition, the conditions were not optimal...

For example, if you're supposed to be doing a lot of moving around with your feet, you don't want to be on a carpet...but I was (And it would be nice to have slick-soled shoes...which I didn't).

And they only played the first, maybe, 30 seconds of the song. Which was good in one regard--I didn't want to have an on-camera heart-attack, after all--but bad in the sense that Hammer's "signature move"--that sideways "scuttle" I mentioned earlier--comes later in the song, and there's a change in the music when he does it (So I did it--badly--because it's "the move", and if you're trying to imitate someone, you have to do "the move". But it wasn't at the right place in the music, which I think made my poor execution look even worse).

I could go on, but you get the idea; the whole experience was humbling, making me feel old and tired and utterly disappointed in myself.

Happy news--I have a callback for the "Harry Potter" thing.

It's no big deal, acting-wise (the call was for "creepy-but-somehow-sympathetic- looking" guys), but as I've said before, I need to get past wanting these things to be "acting showcases" (If that happens, it's "icing on the cake"), and just be excited about the possibility of making good money.

But anyway...

The real news lately is that I now have cable/hi-speed Internet.

I've had it since Friday, and it's wonderful (I swear, when I first turned it on, I could hear choirs of angels...).

But I'm going to have to wax lyrical about this later, because I want to catch a quick nap, before walking the dog, then heading to todays audition.

See you around and about...

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