Author: Wil

Everyone knows that Hunter S. Thompson put a bullet through the back of his head over the weekend, and a lot of readers have wondered why I haven’t commented on his death.
I found out late Sunday night, and I didn’t have net access until late Monday afternoon. By the time I got online, anything I would have said had already been written by much better writers than myself.
I didn’t want to be one of those people who posts about an event just because everyone else is posting about it, and I didn’t want to just say, “Me too.”
But goddammit! I hate it that he’s dead. I hate it that we’ll never get to hear what he thinks about current events. He’s one of the people who made me want to be a writer, and I hate it that I will never have the opportunity to thank (or blame) him.

Last night, I sat in my kitchen and spun the dial on my shortwave radio, trying to find a numbers station (the Spooks mailing list and rec.radio.shortwave both said that E10 had been loud and clear on 6930 over the weekend and I missed it) when I came across a really cool little tune. It sounded like something I’d heard years ago from Voice of Russia, or Deutsche Welle. Though I was really hoping to hear a different tune, (like The Lincolnshire Poacher or Cherry Red), I left my radio tuned to that frequency and imagined that it originated in some obscure station on the other side of the globe . . . because that’s why I listen to SW: there’s something undeniably romantic and mysterious and wonderful about tuning in a broadcast from thousands of miles away. I don’t know many people who listen to SW, and I don’t personally know a single DXer, so I feel like I’m part of something that’s sort of below the radar (er, via the ionosphere.)
Anyway, the song continued for several minutes, and I still couldn’t figure out what it was. I don’t have a current WRTH and I didn’t want to walk all the way to my office to google the frequency, so I just listened. When the song ended, a woman’s voice came on . . . and all my romantic images were shattered. It turns out I was listening to Los Angeles wacko Dr. Gene Scott‘s SW broadcast. The woman announced that Dr. Scott had died earlier in the day, and urged listeners to get to the phones and send in their money. After a minute or so of this, the tune started up again.
Yeah. The cool music I’d imagined coming from some former Eastern Bloc country was actually coming from my own city, from a guy who was part of the background noise of my childhood.
For those of you who didn’t grow up in LA, Gene Scott was a staple of UHF television. He was a televangelist, who (in)famously rambled for up to twelve hours at a time, about all sorts of crazy shit. The camera often framed him from the chin to the top of his ever-present Indiana Jones hat, giving him this look that was equal parts creepy and kind of cool. As far as hucksters go, he’s no Robert Tilton, but for pure entertainment value, not even Wally George could beat this guy. You damn kids today probably don’t watch UHF television, but when I was a kid, my friends and I would stay up late at night and watch this guy through the static on channel 56 or 62 or whatever, and just wonder what the hell was going on.
The freaky thing is, just a few days ago I wondered aloud when Gene Scott was finally going to shuffle off this mortal coil. Which brings me to the moral of this story: my thoughts control the future, so watch ouut.
Or maybe a better moral is: even if you don’t find the numbers station you’re looking for, spinning the dial in your kitchen is a good way to spend an evening.
. . . and that’s not a euphemism.

I wrapped CSI on Wednesday. A brief audioblog about it is here.
I watched the show last night with Anne and the kids, and drove them crazy with comments like, “Oh! Behind that wall is where the craft service table is!” and “See where that corridor curves? That’s the end of the set and if you take a right you’ll walk right out of the stage.” and “Jorja Fox is even more beautiful in person.” and “I was totally in that set on Monday!”
They endured my enthusiasm with patience and good humor. Heh. Anybody else see it? It was seriously the most disturbing episode I’ve ever seen.
Lots of people have asked what flavor of CSI it is, and when it will air. It’s the original CSI (the one in Las Vegas) and it was apparently going to air the first week of March, but it looks like CSI is going to be preempted by March Madness, and it will air later.
But! You can see my World Poker Tour Hollywood Home Game on the Travel Channel on Sunday February 20th. I hardly ever caught cards that night, and I hope I don’t look like a total dope when it’s cut together.
I’m playing in the WPT invitational in less than a week, and I haven’t sat at a poker table since November . . . I haven’t played NLHE in even longer, and I don’t know when I’ll have time to get my game back up to speed between now and then. I have figured out that I need an extra four hours in each day, so I have time to write, be a husband and stepfather, and play poker and D&D. Can someone get on that for me? Thanks.
My latest Games of our Lives is up. This week, I look at a Space Invaders bootleg called Cosmic Monsters:

Let’s be honest, okay? You take the Earth for granted. We all do. But a horde of Cosmic Monsters have turned their greedy, multi-faceted eyes on our Big Blue Marble, and they’re determined to bring their unique brand of alien terror to mankind! Luckily, you’ve got three shields and a missile base that moves left and right. Though the Cosmic Monsters are numerous, they don’t have the most advanced battle plan, so be prepared for them to move from side to side as they drop closer and closer to Earth. And since saving the planet may not be enough for you (it is the ’80s, after all), you will be rewarded with points, hundreds and hundreds of points, which you can use to… uh… impress your friends, or something.

Sketch is doing really well! I’m leaving in about twenty minutes to take him down to the kitty cardiologist for a re-check, but I am very hopeful that he’ll get a check-plus from his doctor. He’s eating, grooming himself regularly, and his breathing is between 24 and 36 (depending on how much he’s been playing with his Kitty Hooch mouse, of course.)
My friend Kevin is in an art show at the Richard Heller Gallery Saturday night. Kevin is a fantastic artist, and all you Westsiders should check it out.
Oh! I’m officially added to the lineup at the Creation Grand Slam show in Pasadena March 11 – 13. You’ll notice that March 12 is a Saturday, which means if you’re coming to town for the convention, you could take a field trip to Hollywood that night and catch me and two other EarnestBorg9 cast members in our supermegaawesome sketch comedy show Acme Love Machine.
It’s raining here, and there’s a pretty strong breeze blowing across my backyard. There’s a tiny hummingbird with a shiny green breast sitting on a telephone wire that connects to the eave just above my office window . . . the wire’s moving all over the place, but he’s not letting go for anything. That’s cool.

After a week on CSI, it’s no mystery why this is the number one drama on television.
Everyone I’ve seen is fiercely dedicated to the success of the show. The actors know and care about their characters, and how they interact with each other. When they’re called to the set, they come immediately. They are prepared: they know their lines and they talk with each other and the director about the scene.
The attention to detail at all levels is meticulous to the point of obsession. Yesterday, I walked around the stage, and looked at the set decoration. Every bit of paper on the wall was from a police department. The magazines in one of the offices aren’t just Las Vegas Showtime guides, they’re Las Vegas Showtime Guides from this freaking year. When the makeup department turns me into Walter, I sit in the chair for half an hour while I get scabs and scars and dirt and track marks and scrapes and cold sores and all sorts of other things applied. It would be easy to just make my hands dirty, but there’s a beautiful logic to the makeup: this scrape leads into this scab, this bruise has a track mark in the middle of it. This streak of dirt ends on my finger, so there’s black makeup applied beneath that nail, and it’s thicker than the gunk beneath the next fingernail. Will the audience notice? Probably not. If the audience is marvelling at how realistic my dirty hands are, we’re in trouble dramatically . . . but all those details add up unconsciously to make the show real. I know as an actor that it’s helped me inhabit Walter at a cellular level. In fact, Walter is the first character I’ve played in my entire career where I have been able to completely abandon myself and totally commit to becoming another person . . . and it’s the most fun I have ever had.

The production office gives DVDs of the recently-aired shows to all the department heads so they know what’s happening in the various story arcs, and every single person that I’ve talked to is proud of the show. I get the sense that this is more than just a paycheck for the people who bring the show to life, they are part of something special, and they know it. CSI could be exclusively about solving the crimes, and it would still be entertaining . . . but it’s the development of the characters, and they devotion with which the actors bring those characters to life that sets CSI apart from its countless imitators.
Friday night, I overheard two of the regulars talking about an episode from a year or so ago.
“Man, I remember the day we shot that,” Actor A said. “It was the end of a long day, I was tired, and I just wanted to go home.”
Actor B said, “Yeah, we’ve all been there.”
“But the scene really suffered because of that,” Actor A said, “and I vowed that I would never let it happen again.”
The hours are long, and the crew frequently works “splits” where you shoot some day exteriors as well as night exteriors. I’ve worked splits before, and they pretty much suck if you want to have any sort of life outside of work . . . but I haven’t heard a single person complain.
Fun fact: there’s wireless in all the stages where they shoot CSI. Sad fact: my iBook’s hard drive had a seizure, so it’s currently at Apple General Hospital and I can’t use the WAP at the studio.
I can WarChalk the studio when I get to work today, though. 🙂

What an amazing day!
Working on CSI is as cool as we all think it is. In fact, it’s cooler. The cast, the crew, the director, the writers, the producers . . . everyone is incredibly cool! I know that I’m only on the show for a few days, but I left the set tonight feeling like I belonged there. Wow. It’s the way people told me we made them feel when they worked on TNG, and that’s pretty cool.
Turning into Walter was really fun, other than the extreme pain that came with my wig. Because I did a stunt tonight (I have to be very careful, and not give any of the plot away, so bear with me) my wig needed to be “anchored” to my own hair. To do that, they hair department put this stuff called hair glue on me, and twisted my real hair into little bundles that they secured with rubber bands. Holy shit did that hurt. Then they put the wig on me, and used pins to “anchor” the wig to those little hair glue balls that happen to be attached to my scalp. Believe it or not, it’s actually as fun as it sounds!
The director (who fucking rocks!) and I decided that Walter has this dangerous volatility to him, that is a result of the voices in his head. Walter uses drugs and alcohol to quiet those voices in his head . . . but it’s not working as well as he hoped it would. In fact, it’s kinda making it worse. Okay, it’s really making it worse, and playing that was just too much fun. Of course, because I’m in a serious makeup and costume thing, it’s that much easier to totally become this guy.
We shot out in Northridge tonight, in this über suburban area, and I *really* wanted to wander around the streets in my Walter clothes and makeup, shouting at people that only I could see. I was going to take bets on how long I could get away with that before someone called the police . . . but it turned out that I had real work to do, so that will sadly remain just an idea. Maybe next time.
This neat thing happened tonight. One of the crew came over to me and said, “It’s like you’re getting paid to play.”
“Yeah, I didn’t work all last year, so I could save up for this part,” I said, only half-joking.
But it’s true. I’m having so much fun, and I had this great Moment of Clarity™ tonight after a particularly good take: “This is why I wanted to be an actor”, I thought, “I can’t believe how lucky I am!”
I’ve made some notes, and I’ll do my best to write a cool blog about the day, but it’s past midnight, and I have to be back on the set tomorrow morning, so I’m going to sleep now . . . right after I wash all this hair glue off my head.
\m/