bloggie blog

Frequently, people tell me I remind them of Darrin Stephens on Bewitched. It’s confusing because Darrin Stephens was played by Dick York for 156 episdoes then by Dick Sargent for 84 episodes. Two Darrens, two Dicks.

Which Dick do I remind you of most? Links in Dicks’ names are to Google Images. Click, look, and weigh in via the comments.

From Bradley Whitford vomiting to clear a crime scene, to the poster art for the show, to Billy Squier’s “Stroke Me” introducing a sexy hot rod car, The Good Guys tickles my funny bone. Many months ago, I worked on the script for the pilot in an acting class, and I was hooked. I hope it lasts! Sometimes the good shows don’t, but The Good Guys, like Modern Family, could be a show we’ll be talking about for years to come.

It’s written by Ginsburg & McIntyre, and you can follow their shenanigans more on the Twitter.

Recently, IMDb Pro did a small redesign. Quick review: Looks better in browser, prints horribly.

I offer herein a quick fix to the printing problem, at least in Safari / Mac OS X. (Other browsers should have similar solutions for the savvy web user.)

Create a file named something.css and store it on your hard drive wherever you want. I call mine “overcome.css” and put in a my Documents folder. Edit this file with a plain-text editor. Do not use Word. Put this text, this CSS code, into that file, then save it and close it:

@media print {
#nav-wrapper { display: none; }
}

(Alternate solution if plain-text editing is beyond your computer routine: download overcome.css.)

Now in Safari, go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced. Where it says Style Sheet, select the file you just created or downloaded. That’s it! See the difference below, where I offer a side-by-side comparison of the first printed page of my IMDb Pro page. Quick review: Better. Way better. IMDb should hire me.

UPDATE: It turns out that Safari users will benefit from one other CSS change, due to poor cross-browser issues with the new IMDb Pro look. Add this to overcome.css in order to avoid the weird thing that happens where the page shifts down 21 pixels just as it finishes rendering. I’ve altered the download file accordingly.

#nav-wrapper #navbar { margin: 0 !important; }

Again, IMDb should hire me.

(Please leave a comment if you find it useful, or if you find an error.)

Actors: If you’re new to town, or if you’re new to targeting commercials, you can turn to many paid online and print sources to learn who casts commercials in Los Angeles and where they work. The trouble is, these lists aren’t visual, and they contain long lists, while the reality is that the few, busiest commercial casting directors do most of the work.

Take a look at this map I made over on the Google. It shows the busiest commercial casting locations in LA. This is handy information! But not complete. Some of these are drop-off friendly, others are not. Some good commercials do get cast elsewhere. But most commercial actors are going to one of these places whenever they get an audition from their agent.

Good luck!

Please leave a comment if you find it useful, or if you find an error.

For Independence Day, I traveled to Utah. My motivation was to check in with my family again, and I got to see my dad and some sibs. While there, I partook in a small portion of America’s Freedom Festival. That’s right, America has a Freedom Festival, and it happens in Provo.

In my parents’ neighborhood, love of country was on display when I arrived from a Boy Scout’s Eagle project of several years ago: US flags flying in front of every house. At right, I reach out to it.

In my sister’s neighborhood, downtown Provo, which has a number of beautiful old homes, the parade happens. She lives one block from the route. Things are tame here, of course, so the 300,000 people who watched it do make for an unusual situation with rules and rule-breaking. The city put up red garbage cans per block, and post-parade the place was pretty durn clean. That’s love of country.

After the parade, at the Freedom Fair (I’m making that up, but it could be correct), we bought sunglasses and Tater Twists. Each plateful of Tater Twists is one russet potato sliced into one continuous curl — with a homemade gadget that involved, literally, a power drill for every potato — and then deep-fried to golden perfection. What a country!