Rockstar Storytellers, Now With More Rocks and Stars
Did my first photoshoot as an official member of the Rockstar Storytellers yesterday. It's a bit strange to think that I've been on stage with the group off and on since their second year, and I've been an official part of their roster for one full year now and I'm still having these brand new experiences with them. Photoshoot went well, though. Dennis Zerwas came out and took pictures at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Tom Reed molested each of us in unique ways throughout the process. Joseph Scrimshaw was in a show immediately after, which I saw, which was fun. Hadn't slept much prior to the whole thing and I'm pretty sure I was sleepwalking through most of it. Pretty sure I'm sleepwalking through this entry as well.
True Stories from Sci-Fi Tuesdays
I was sitting on an outdoor patio at a fashionable Minneapolis destination in the warehouse district and talking to a friend last week. He was making a point about how we local celebrity types can use the social capital inherent in our notoriety to garner support for whatever new creative project we're trying to pull off at the time. I generally agreed with him, as I feel like I encounter a certain level of receptiveness to my new ideas that some other guy with more talent and worse personal branding wouldn't get. Still, I've never quite gotten the hang of funding future instances of being Rob Callahan by simply being Rob Callahan now. Not saying it can't be done. Just saying sometimes a day job seems easier.
To drive the point home, he told me, "Look around and name one other person on this patio with as much creativity and name recognition as you've got."
I looked around and said, "J Evan LeFreak."
"Alright, name two."
If only Josh Hartnett had been hanging around...
What Writers Do When They're Not Writing
That's actually anybody's guess. I can only speak for myself, and for myself I say something else creative and mildly entrepreneurial. There were those Fringe Festival shows a year or two back, there's the ongoing Sci-Fi Tuesdays series and a bunch of other stuff that I start out and then figure the cost to outweigh the benefits. There are seriously a lot of those, none of which you'll probably ever see.
Speaking in Fatiguese
Normally, when a copy editor sends something back for a rewrite, it's one of two things. Either I sent in a typo that renders part of the article ambiguous or the CE wants to throw some weight around at the nearest available writer. The ratio of former to latter has stayed about 50/50 since I wrote my first bit of freelance work years ago. This morning's rewrite request cited glaring mistakes. I take that to mean I am too fatigued to write anymore right now, so I reluctantly yield to the nagging sleep urge...
Dear SFGate, Why?
Why do you only hire me to write factual articles on home renovation and repair when there are messed up goingson like this on which I could report? Seriously, I want to write about the stuff that makes humans ashamed to be humans: