Category: Blog
True life adventures of my real true life.
2016 Creative Goal
Here it is, the tail end of January, and I’ve finally nailed down my personal creative goal for 2016. I actually nailed it down the second week of January, but I’ve just now found the time to write about it.
Last year, my goal was to create and publish a piece of audio every week for a full year. I’m happy to say I achieved that goal and then some. But that triumph left me in a little bit of a quandary. After producing 52 weeks of content, what was I going to do with the podcast? Keep it going and just relax the schedule and work on something else? I wasn’t sure.
But then I remembered an idea I had a few years ago about doing a podcast where I sat down and talked to my friends for 15 or so minutes about their life and creative pursuits. I actually recorded a few of these interviews and so I found the card they were on and listened through them. That’s when my goal for 2016 hit me: record 52 podcast interviews in 2016. (Please notice, I didn’t say one interview a week. I’ll be releasing them once a week but I will be stacking the recordings.)
So, that’s my plan for 2016, record 52 podcast interviews. I’ve already recorded 5 of them and I have one more scheduled to record tonight. I’ve also reached out to several friends to schedule recording times and the response has been positive. The first of these interviews comes out tomorrow morning over on the GrantCast (which now has a website http://www.GrantCast.com). It’s an interview with a friend I’ve known for a few years now and it was so much fun to sit down and chat with her about her creative pursuits. Who is it? You’ll find out tomorrow on the podcast.
Now, not all of these 52 interviews will wind up on the GrantCast. That’s not the plan at any rate. I have an idea for yet another podcast that some of these interviews would be recorded for. For right now, the focus of that podcast will be kept under wraps but it’ll be fun. I have feelers out to some very good interview subjects for those interviews. Stay tuned.
So, I hope you enjoy the new interviews starting tomorrow on the GrantCast and please, feel free to drop me a line and tell me what you think.
Happy New Year!
2015 Recap
Well, that was a year.
Deep in my gut, I feel, it wasn’t a very good year at all. Lots of stress. Lot and lots of work for little or no money. Lots of promises of work that never panned out. Last year, I noted that 2015 may have been the last year I try to ‘make it’ in the entertainment industry. I feel that now more than ever. I have been perusing jobs in other cities: a news reporter spot in a tiny town in Oregon, researching the steps to become a National Park Ranger. Anyway, I’m looking into everything.
I figured instead of focusing on the negative, I’d take a look back at 2015 and the things that really meant a lot to me in 2015:
- Unfriend (The Facebook Song) was the #2 most requested song for the year on Dr. Demento
- Produced 26 episodes of Uncle Interloper content and completed a series of ads for the Feed A Puppy App that featured Uncle Interloper and Pasquale
- Produced 30 pieces of video for the Country Bear Collector Show.
- Spent my 41st birthday in the best way imaginable, by myself, at Disneyland with a dinner at the Big Thunder Barbecue.
- Completed my goal for 2015 of producing and releasing a piece of audio every Saturday for a whole year with the GrantCast, which included publishing the audio version of my novella Agents of the Vault.
- Continued to improve in my ringside and backstage interviewing skills with Championship Wrestling from Hollywood.
- Filmed and edited two seasons of The Ultimate Nerd-ament for Stan Lee’s YouTube Channel. (Released three seasons total).
- Performed a Throwing Toasters 20th Anniversary show.
- Performed in 2 of the 4 Puppet Up Shows in Culver City, CA earlier in the year. The other two shows I was hired on to produce a series of promotional videos for the show.
- Conceived and recorded the first two episodes of a new podcast, Elf Centered.
- Doing my ‘Mr. Grant’ family act, I performed 5 library shows and a regular series of shows at Flappers Comedy Club as part of their two milk minimum show.
- Was a Instructor’s Aide for the Henson Diversity Workshop and got to work closely with Kevin Clash for several weeks. (This was a highlight.)
A fine list of accomplishments indeed. As great as they are, none of the above brought in any amount of money that can be considered a livable wage. I’m sure if you worked it all out, I made less than a minimum wage employee would have this year. Hence the reason I need to find something else. This just isn’t cutting it.
So here comes 2016. Only thing to do is slam into it and keep going on, but there’s got to be a shift this year. This year something has to pan out. Some sort of stable work using my creative abilities or I’m going to have to shift and look elsewhere.
I often feel that everything I’m currently creating (the videos, music, podcasts), I can create from anywhere. There’s nothing that’s keeping me here in Los Angeles, so perhaps a change of venue might be a good thing. I can keep creating but far from the Hollywood machine and the pressure it puts on creatives.
I can never not be creative. But the dream of trying to be creative and having any large amount of people take notice, is not going to pan out. That’s not negative self talk, that’s just the facts. It is time to move on. So, I will begin looking at where to move.
Here’s to a better 2016. It’ll have to be, won’t it? I don’t see any other choice.
Now it hurts…
My weight has gotten to the point where now, it hurts. And not just hurts in a way like my knees hurt or back hurts, though I’ve been having issues there as well. It hurts to wear jeans. I’m usually a size 34, but now those jeans cause my physical pain around the waist to wear. Ouch.
So once again I try to refocus myself and concentrate on the weight loss. The last time I lost any significant amount of weight was back at the start of the year when I was in the Do it for your selfie Challenge with my pal John. I lost about 13-15 pounds. That contest sort of fizzled out for various reasons, so I lost focus and gained it all back. And then some.
My goal has always been to get to 160 lbs, but that is far, far away from this point. I then revised my goal to just lose 10 lbs. Now my goal is to just get through one day of eating right! Ugh. It’s awful.
So now I’m wondering if there’s anyone out there who’d love to jump into a challenge to try and drop some pounds before the end of the year. I know the holidays are tough with the cookies and treats, but I think we can do it.
The winner would be the person who lost the most percentage of weight in the given time, say December 1-31. No need to post weights anywhere or even share them with me, I trust you my dear friends. We would just check in every week with the percentage lost. I just think the ‘challenge’ idea works for me as it did earlier this year and I’d love to find someone to challenge.
No prizes. No loser humiliations. Just a weight loss challenge.
Anyone up for trimming down? Let me know in the comments below or via email grant @ throwing toasters . com (no spaces)
RIP Pat McCormick
[UPDATE]
So, yeah. Apparently Pat McCormick didn’t die. He’s very much alive and kicking in his secluded home in the Pacific Northwest. Apparently, he sent word to his son, through his wife, that he had died in order to cut off communication with his son. Yeah.
The things I said below are all still true and, I don’t believe, can be erased. Of course, what went on in the family should remain in the family and I have no desire for any details, but this certainly does put a weird tint on someone who certainly influenced me.
I wanted to update this post because it gets a fair amount of traffic on this site, but I’m going to leave the original post up because, when I wrote it, I was speaking from the heart. I hope Pat McCormick lives a full and healthy life and whatever went on between members of the family get resolved.
[ORIGINAL]
Very saddened to read the news that Pat McCormick passed away in late October. Along with the rest of the kids growing up in the Bay Area during that time, I knew all the words to his daily ‘Charley & Humphrey’ bits on KTVU Channel 2.
“Glue, I need Glue”
“A Honeybee just landed on my back leg. Now, if we sit real still, he’ll fly away.”
“How about if I kick him off?”
“You get seasick when you get near the bathtub!”
“I apologize for poking you in the nose!”
Pat’s two handed, doing both voices, style was a major influence on my love of puppetry just as much as Jim Henson was. My Uncle Interloper shorts draw direct inspiration from Charley & Humphrey. In fact, I’d say I learned the fine art of doing a take to the camera from Charley’s exasperated takes when dealing with Humphrey.
It’s a shame that there’s only a handful of the Bits & Pieces stuff that survives online. I wrote to KTVU years ago asking for copies and they said most of it had been taped over. Such a shame. To their credit, they have uploaded some earlier Charley & Humphrey PSAs (that were a little before my time) to their YouTube, but of the classics: Coast Guard, Bees, Pussyfoot is a Bully to Humphrey and Borrowing Without Asking, only the last two remain (at least on YouTube).
This link contains a good (and last known) interview with Pat. Seems he was burnt out by the end and slipped into a well deserved retirement. I, for one, will continue to remember Charley Horse and Humphrey T. Hambone and will attempt to create in their style.
Thanks Pat.