shanenickerson.com

Thoughts on Iran

I've been trying to get my head around the current events in Iran. Those who think that what's happening there doesn't affect us might be underestimating the importance of the universal struggle for freedom of choice and human rights. It's easy to fall into the mindset of "us and them," but it seems to me the more obvious choice is "us." I stand in solidarity with any human being trying to be heard and any group willing to stand up to tyranny. Yes, we are still struggling with issues in our own country. I don't believe we have to live in a perfect society to root for and support those trying to make a better life, seek liberty, or pursue happiness. Our own forefathers would probably agree.

Maz Jobrani, an actor I know from Acme Comedy Theater, is from Iran. He sent out an email with his thoughts on the subject, which are more personal, more informed, and probably more valid than my own:

______________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Dear Friends,

The recent events in Iran have had me glued to the TV, the internet and anything else that can give me updates on what is going on in the country of my birth. When I was 6 years old in Iran, the revolution of '78-'79 happened. I remember having to have our lights off by a certain time for curfew and how the police would drive by and flash their lights into our homes to make sure we weren't causing any trouble. I also remember one time running into our basement when we heard gunfire coming form a protest close to our home. At the time I was a kid and had no idea what was going on. I just thought it was cool to be hanging with my mom and family in the dark in the basement. For a 6 year old it was an adventure - like being in the Bat Cave.

30 years later I am being bombarded with images and clips from the protests in Iran that remind me of my youth. As someone who is not in the country and watching from overseas I must say that I am emboldened by what the people of Iran are doing these days. No proof has come out to show that the election was actually stolen, but the obvious signs do point to voter fraud. In breaking it down on some of my shows I've been saying that it seems in a country of 70 million people, Ahmadinejad got 75 million votes. Voter fraud? Divine intervention? You be the judge.

Anyway, I am writing this e-mail to express my solidarity with those within the country struggling to have their voices heard and their votes counted. It has been too long that the people of Iran have had to live like 5 year olds being monitored by "adults" who tell them what to wear, how to act and what they can and cannot do. The last time I was in Iran was just over 10 years ago and I remember leaving my mother country feeling depressed. I remember coming back to the US and making sure I appreciated the freedoms that we have here. I remember thinking that the people of the world should be guaranteed these basic freedoms which do not exist in Iran.

I hope that you will keep this struggle in your mind and support them in any way you can. I have changed the image on all my facebook and myspace accounts to the image attached here. Please do support by at least using this image on your facebook and myspace pages. I also know that many peaceful rallies are taking place around the world in support of this movement. If you have the time please do join in these marches.

Last, but not least here are a few links that I found interesting and helpful:

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oM6l9PO6Yo
This one comes from Iran where at night the reformists are yelling "God is Great" in support of the movement. The woman speaking on the video breaks down towards the end and she keeps asking "where is this?" Responding to herself "This is my country Iran." It's actually very moving if you can have a farsi speaking friend translate.

2) http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3869
This one is a Brazilian expert on Iran who breaks the situation down very well.

3) www.myspace.com/revolutionofthemindhiphop
This last one is a song that a friend of mine put together. It has some explicit lyrics, but I hope you enjoy.

All the best,

Maz
______________________________________________________________________________________________

the war continues

I just bought this shirt from Amazon:

The tee-shirt war with Lauren has just been escalated...

Meow the Lyrics!

Meow the Lyrics! from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

There is no "B"

There is no "B" from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

This one's a dud.

This one's a dud. from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

Rock a Dragon on a Monday

Rock a Dragon from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

here and gone

This morning, I awoke to a level 6 fiasco.  It involved a diaper-less baby, a carpet, and bad timing on the diaper-less part.  My wife, accustomed to dealing with most baby and child-related fiascoes, could not decide how to best proceed.  From the other room, I heard her tell no one in particular, "Uh...okay...I'm not sure what to do here."

I can fake sleep my way through level 5 fiascoes and below, but I didn't have the heart to let my wife battle this one alone.  She took the kid into the bathroom to hose him down, and I got out the resolve and got to scrubbing the shitty carpet.  I've been awake since then.

Part of me relishes this easy phase of parenting.  It's not the ideal way to start a day, but it's a lot easier than dealing with a teenager that hates you.  I'd guess it's a lot easier than dealing with finding a pack of smokes in your kid's jacket, or finding beer bottles hidden in the trash.  Those are the days I fear.

At five and a half, Lucy is starting to deal with the stresses of social acceptance.  It's heartbreaking to watch your kid face rejection for the first time, or see her try to manage awkwardness and shyness.  I want to protect her from all the pain of it, but I understand that she must go through these things.  I feel like a salty old general who has braved all the battles of childhood social struggles, and I know that my reassuring words will do nothing to actually help, yet still I lend them.  I curse myself for some of my traits she has inherited.  I want so badly for her to be confident and wise and unfazed, but I know that these things take time.  Even in my late 30's, I'm still trying to get there myself.

Parenting is hard.  It's hard because if you're not careful, it can slip right by you before you realize that the days you keep waiting for are already here.  It's hard to believe that I will one day look back fondly on scrubbing baby crap out of a carpet, but I'm telling you, I know I for sure that I will.

don't call it a comeback...

As I prepare both mentally and physically for my 20th High School reunion (June 27), I've discovered there is truth to the old adage, "Healthy body, healthy mind."  Although this upcoming reunion served as the perfect excuse to make substantial changes to my diet and lifestyle, I also tend to think I was at that tipping point; the point you get to when enough is enough.  None of my pants fit, and I was starting to grow man boobs.  Nothing will snap you out of dietary recklessness like seeing a couple of shocking photos of yourself posted on Facebook where you look like a bloated corpse with damn near chick tits.  At least, it worked on me.

So I decided to start running again.  Rather than worry about how fast and far, I'm running enough to feel good when I'm done.  It's such a nice break from my usual pattern of setting lofty, impossible goals and then ultimately disappointing myself.  I don't have plans to run a marathon, or even a shorter race at this point.  I run to feel better.  That's it for now.

I also stopped eating garbage.  Not landfill garbage, but fast food and chips and candy and soda and red bull and fried food and horseshit.  Not horse's shit, but all the horseshit you'd find on the shelves of an AM/PM.  I love that stuff, but it was getting out of hand, friends.  I was eating like a depressed fat kid at sleepaway camp.

I replaced all of that junk intake with fresh produce and salads.  If my mother is reading this, she almost certainly doesn't believe me.  It's true though, mom. I've started eating a healthy salad at lunch every single day.  It's amazing how much more lettuce and green stuff you can eat when you're STARVING.  I never thought I'd look forward to olives and chicken chunks as much as when I'm pillaging a chopped salad. 

I've also cut out most bread and flour-based stuff.  Again, I'm not fanatic about it, but for the most part, wonderful, glorious bread is not in my diet.

And the most difficult thing to cut out of my diet?  Beer.  You have no idea how much I love beer.  I love beer more than air.  I set a goal to lose 20 pounds though, and keeping beer around threatened my hope of reaching that goal.  It's not permanent, and not always possible to resist, and it also doesn't mean I don't have the occasional scotch (or 8, like at the MTV Movie Awards), but I've limited my alcohol intake by a huge margin. 

All of these things have had an amazing effect on me.

I have energy again.  I feel creative again.  I've dropped 15 pounds.  I'm happier and feel better and have amazing clarity I haven't had for months (years?).  It's part of the reason I'm writing again here, and posting dumb little vlogs.  I missed this outlet, but for a very long time, I really didn't want to participate anymore.  Recently, that's changed and it makes me happy and excited.

So: I'm reinvigorated by Twitter and the dynamic and supportive community there; I'm still riding a huge wave of viral elation because of the "F Twitter" video, I'm feeling healthy, happy and excited about what's coming up on the horizon for me (lots), and most importantly (for me), I've finally returned to wanting my small place within this online community back.  It all feels good.

If it sounds like I'm saying, "GO, ME!"  or "BASK IN MY HEALTH!", I'm really not.  I just wanted to share with you why I'm back after a rather long absence.  There's even more to the story (which I might share with you one day), but this is the part I'm telling right now.

It's so nice to be back. 

Oh, and you'll be happy to know...the man boobs are pretty much gone. 

I know what to do at the beep.

I know what to do at the beep. from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

They're not all home runs.  Sometimes they're just hard singles up the middle.

Relevant links:

Anti-Drug PSA YouTube

Crazy Calls YouTube

Rich Little Answering Machine tape at Amazon

Smart Beep "First Date" YouTube

pinnacle

OMFGALMIGHTY.  Anyone that "gets" the Internet will understand why the following screen grab generates the same excitement level for me as, say, winning a brand new spaceship.

Thanks for the nod, Wil.  I'm giddy about it.

Immune

Immune from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

F Twitter

F Twitter from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

Red-Headed Step Bitch

New Vlog 3: Red-Headed Step Bitch from Shane Nickerson on Vimeo.

Hayley Pyle: Part 3!

In 2005, I wrote two blog posts about my long lost PenPal from my early teen years, Hayley Pyle. 

For the rest of this particular entry to make sense, you may want to read (or for some of you, re-read) those two entries to get caught up:

1. Hayley Pyle: Part 1

2. Hayley Pyle: Part 2

If you need a little convincing, internet guru, friend and wizened sage Wil Wheaton flattered me back then by posting in the comments:

Wow, Shane. You *need* to turn this into a short story.

This is the best thing I've read all week.

And by best, I mean the most enjoyable, most wonderful, made-me-feel-good thing.

Rock.

Posted by: Wil | 03/18/2005 at 05:10 PM

I never did turn it into a short story, but sometimes stories continue to write themselves in real life, even after you've stopped writing them. This particular story has a new chapter.

Back in 2005, this blog had a little bit of google ranking power and I thought if I wrote about Hayley Pyle, my long lost PenPal girlfriend, someone who knew her would surely google her name and land here.  Eventually, she'd see the entry and we'd have a chance to reconnect after all these years.  After countless fruitless google searches and no bites on either of the two Hayley Pyle blog entries, I all but abandoned any hope of ever hearing from my old letter-writing friend.

And then, Facebook intervened.

The magic of Facebook is the extent to which it snaps you back to your past.  I've received friend requests from people I haven't even considered for 20 or 30 years.  It's an amazing tool for bringing old circles of friends back from extinction, and an incredibly simple and somewhat painless way of reconnecting.  When someone you're really excited about hearing from sends you a friend request...you know, like someone you wrote a two part blog entry about back in 2005...there is a kind of giddy excitement that overtakes you as you click "accept."  What is she up to?  Is she healthy and happy?  What does she look like after all this time?  Any kids?  So many questions.

Hayley found me.  After all the years I spent searching google, she found me with a simple facebook search.  I was thrilled.

And then I panicked about those two old blog entries from 2005.  Although I had once hoped (and intended) for the entries to be discovered by either Hayley or one of her friends, I never really considered how that might play out.  What if she didn't want to be remembered in a public forum?  What if my impact on her was quite less than hers on me?  What if she got pissed?

A lesson I learned early as a blogger is that some people don't like to have their name bandied about on a public weblog.  I published the Hayley Pyle story two months before the tabloid fiasco hit, and I'll tell you this much, a little International scrutiny will make you think twice about who and what you write about.  It's just easier and wiser to limit the involvement of other "characters" from your life on a public weblog. 

After several months of being "Facebook Friends" with Hayley, I stopped worrying about the old entries.  They were buried deep inside the innards of Nickerblog, probably jammed up by borked links and the messy aftermath of a deleted and restored weblog.  We exchanged wall comments and complimented each other's pictures and everything was cool.  I was safe from discovery.

And then today, Hayely posted a note on my Wall:

"Aneta & I met at a wedding this weekend and figured some stuff out. I was second choice! We had a good time laughing at all that OM. P.S. Pictures are great!"

Uh-oh.  In Part 2, I wrote: "and if you must know, it was her friend Aneta that I was initially interested in that day at the pool in Arizona." 

Next she wrote:

"Ohhh...and Lesa is just fine. You can find her at the local Wal-Mart as some sort of manager I think! Pass it on."

D'oh!  I mentioned my brother's Arkansas PenPal, Lesa Via in Part 1!  I froze.  After all this time, Hayley Pyle had discovered my blog.  Specifically, Hayley Pyle had discovered herself and her friends written about in detail on my blog.  I quickly replied (wall to wall):

HA! Oh man, I'm so busted. I forgot about the second choice thing. Clearly, I must have been an idiot kid. Surely you found the two blog entries I wrote in 2005 about our penpal love affair back in the 80s? If not, I'll send you the links. :)

"I'll send you the links?"  SHE'S SEEN THE LINKS, DUMMY.  How nice of you to offer up the LINKS to something she has CLEARLY SEEN.  There was more back and forth, but I'll spare you the details.  I sent her a long message, hoping (praying) she understood how fondly I looked back on our PenPal days. 

It turns out, Hayley and Aneta (the one I called my first choice in Part 1) both got quite a kick out of the entries.  I made extra sure it was okay to leave the posts up, and I also asked Hayley if it would be okay to write this follow-up to the earlier posts.  She wrote:

"It's all great fun. Really. Knock yourself out. I'd like to choose the next photo! I'm pretty sure you'd love to put up the ones of me & my chickens. :)"

Ha.  The truth is, I LOVE the photo she posted of her and her chickens!  I won't re-post it here though, mostly because I'm pretty sure she'd kick my ass over the internet somehow.  And I'm pretty sure I'd deserve it.  But it's a great photo.  You'll just have to believe me.

So there you go.  A happy ending to an entry I posted a little more than four years ago.

But I guess the real story is ongoing.  We remain Facebook friends, and after so many years, we are back to being something like modern-day penpals.  Of course, now it's on dashed off Facebook wall posts and the occasional picture comment, but it's an important connection with my past.  Those letters from Hayley I used to wait for desperately in 1986 meant more to me than anything else at that age.  Today, it's nice to stay in touch with a person who made such a big impact on my life with just written words sent through the mail.

Thankfully, whatever I wrote to her as an awkward teen back in the mid-80's never ended up in a blog post on the internet for all the world to see.  Yet.  :)

Incidentally, reading the old posts made me a little envious (if one can be envious of one's own writing), because they tap into an honesty I have a hard time accessing these days.  I used to write so openly, and as I struggle to get back there, reading archives is actually a big help.  I know what you're thinking: "Hey, Shane...it's not all about you."  But actually, here at this spot on the web...IT IS!  :)

here and there

Taking the time to sit and write a blog entry is like sitting down and drinking a nice cup of coffee.  The problem with Twitter is that there's never any meat to anything anyone says.  Don't get me wrong...I'm hopelessly addicted.  As addicted as I am though, it's like a never ending barrage of one-liners and hot links.  Makes for great, quick diversions or updates, but it also really makes me miss the process of sitting down to compose a somewhat thoughtful assemblage of words.  I would blame Twitter for my waning attention span, but I think I'm just waning in lots of areas as I get older. 

Today was a multi-hat day.  Of course, my regular 9 to 5 (well, 10-7) is my gig as Executive Producer of Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory.  It's a great gig, that I love for so many reasons.  As one of the people who conceived and built the new series as a follow up to the beloved Rob and Big, I'm very proud of how it turned out and I am beyond excited for another season of insanity.  It is an exceptionally fun show to be a part of.  Still, I can't help but keep a loose foot in the acting ring.  More specifically, I've been doing Voice-Over jobs from time to time.  I've got a couple of A&W Root Beer commercials out there now (the campaign is the one with the main character drinking from a giant barrel of root beer), a honda spot that I did with my wife, and today I did a Cool Whip spot.  It took me at least a couple of years to crack my first VO gig, and now my batting percentage is going up a little.

I tell myself that the reason I keep trying to book a couple of acting/vo gigs a year is to keep my insurance.  It's partially true, I guess.  The other reason is because I think I'm starting to believe the old saying: "once a performer, always a performer."  Just ask Eminem...or Garth Brooks...or Anvil.

I'm a rusty writer.  I'm not worried about it, because I know I'll catch back up.  But for right now, it feels like I'm clunking together thoughts haphazardly.  Only way to get it back is to push through the clunk. 

Maybe old school Ray-Bans will help.

       

5 and 19

Although it seems impossible, my daughter and son are now 5 years old and 19 months, respectively.  Lucy, the princess of the family, has taken on the role of big sister with ease.  It's like she was born to tell people what to do, and how to do things better and more efficiently.  I have no idea where she gets that trait.  Certainly not from me.  I am as non-controlling and easy as they come...just ask my wife!  Wait, scratch that.

She's an incredibly loving big sister.  Her brother is lucky to have her, and he thanks her endlessly by smashing her toys, chucking her Calico Critters around the house, and pulling her hair.  It's a match made in heaven.

I feel very lucky (most days) to have such healthy, amazing kids.  Time moves so fast, the older you get.  Sometimes I see pictures of myself and my children and wonder which family I'm looking at.  It's hard to believe I'm the dad and the husband I used to one day imagine myself being.  Most of the time, I still feel like the kid dreaming of the family I now have.  It's weird.  The world's biggest secret is that parents have no idea what they're doing most of the time.  The nice thing about the age they're at right now, is that they haven't figured that out yet. 

It is not hard for me to imagine the day that I will look back on these pictures as some of the happiest days of my life.  As I look at them now, I suppose I feel the exact same way.

* Also, I've added some Amazon Associates links to this blog, as you might have noticed (including a banner on the side of my site, which points to the new Kindle.  Not because I have one, but because it makes me drool.)  Since I am an avid Amazon user, I decided to include some links from time to time.  Most people are reading these entries in a feedreader of some kind anyway, so the banner ads on my site won't even faze you. I'm not relying on the fives of dollars the associates links will generate, but I do think it's a really easy way to raise money for charity.

However:

“Associates may donate their earnings to a charity, but may not announce to their visitors in any way that a portion or all of the proceeds will go to a particular charity.”

Fine.  It's a charity that means a lot to me.  I guess that's all that really matters.

The Shark Shirt

This shirt is even better in real life. I'm in the midst of an epic tee-shirt battle with a co-worker. I need ideas, people! Help me find incredible tees. Vlog to come...

100% incredible

@feliciaday linked yesterday to an Amazon.com page with hilarious reviews of a Sea Cow shirt.  It's a really funny read.  I explored other shirts by the maker ("The Mountain"), and every single one is fucking amazing (if not intentionally). This is the one I bought:

Because, how could I not buy this?  It's incredible. I seriously want every shirt "The Mountain" sells. 

(fd: links are associates links)

since you've been gone...

Lately, I feel increased pressure to NOT write about what I'm doing or excited about, and I guess I've decided to fly in the face of that philosophy.  Whether here or on Twitter, I'm writing for an audience of people that (hopefully) care about what I'm doing, are interested in what I'm excited about and are reading or following because they know me (online or IRL) and want to catch up.  It's easy to forget how simple it is to NOT read someone you don't want to know about, so I'd like to remind the folks that don't feel like they're getting what they're not paying for to form a line right over there next to the box of dogshit.  That's free too!

(Jim Gaffigan voice): Why is he so angry?  He's a jerk.

I'm coming off of a brief hiatus between seasons of "Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory" on MTV.  It's a comedic reality show, which is incredibly fun to create and produce.  I've been working in the "reality" genre for quite a while, but both this show and "Rob and Big" feel more like improvised comedies than they do "reality shows."  Of course, the stuff we film is all grounded in some kind of reality, but we are also fortunate enough to have a star who is naturally one of the funniest people I've ever worked with.  It helps to make the job fun and endlessly rewarding.  I know that "reality shows" are often discounted as fluff or meaningless TV drivel, but I'm proud of this show that I helped create.  Getting it off the ground was an incredible challenge, but well worth all of the sweat and stress it took to do so.  It's something I would watch if I didn't work on it, and that's something I feel lucky to be able to say.

In addition to RDFF, I've been developing a few other projects for TV and one for... (gulp) the web!  I can't really talk about the TV projects (mostly because I'm superstitious about that kind of thing), but the web project is enough of a pet project that I don't mind talking about it for a second...

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I produce television.  While it's true that I make most of my living producing TV shows, I still make a little piece of my living as an actor.  I've never been one of those actors that makes enough money to survive on, but I usually make at least enough to qualify for the basic SAG insurance.  It's one of the reasons I keep doing commercials and voice over: the health insurance.  I'd be lying though, if I told you that insurance is the sole reason I keep a foot in the acting world.  Although I've pretty much abandoned my former aspirations to be AN IMPORTANT ACTOR, those who've been bitten will tell you that the acting bug never leaves you forever or completely.  It's like chicken pox: Once you've had it, it lives in your system forever.  Sometimes, it even manifests itself as shingles!  Wait, bad example...

Anyway, I have a friend who works for a major web outlet.  Like me, he wears several hats: producer, writer, author, blogger, and jack-of-all-entertainment-industry-trades.  He's currently in charge of programming at the aforementioned major web-based company, and he recently asked me if I'd be interested in developing a show for the intertubes. 

Uh, are you kidding?  I LOVE THE INTERTUBES!

So the project I'm developing is a web-series about....

Oh wait...

I can't tell you that just yet.

But the exciting part is that I'm not only writing and co-creating it with my friend and co-worker, Christian Duguay, I'm also one of the two leads.  Like I said, it's a pet project so...I get to make the rules.  I got sick of trying to be an actor a long time ago, but that doesn't mean I don't miss performing.  In the back of my head, for the past several years, I've had the distant goal to one day do it on my own terms.  Trying to be an actor means constantly getting in front of people in an unnatural audition setting to prove to them that you are worthy of being in their project.  It's an annoying, daunting, and not necessarily effective (although entirely necessary, I suppose) means of casting roles. 

But what if you could cut out that part of the process, get the part (because you wrote the part) and be in charge at the same time, while retaining complete creative control?

Exactly.

If all goes well, we'll be shooting a pilot in June. 

More to come...

hello, again.

I'm between seasons on my MTV show, which means the energy I normally pour into my work must find other outlets.  Lately, I've been obsessed (along with most of the geeks I know) with Twitter.  For a while, I thought Twitter would mean the death of blogging. I don't believe that anymore.  As a matter of fact, I think it's had the exact opposite effect on me.

For the longtime readers, it's no secret that I've struggled with maintaining this blog.  I've shut it down more times than I can remember, including deleting it altogether a few months back(I'm in the process of trying to restore it to it's former linkability, but that is proving a challenge).  As I look back on older entries, it's very clear to me that my willingness to share personal anecdotes and silly little vlogs dried up substantially after my life weirdly crossed paths with a popular tabloid in 2005.  I began to view this blog as a liability.  It turned too many eyes on a spot that was, until then, a safe haven for me to write from the heart.  Of course, I understand the hypocrisy of writing a public weblog, savoring the attention and positive comments, and then withdrawing once the attention comes.  I am conflicted, which is a strange character trait that I am aware of.  That aside, the main roadblock for me was: I stopped being able to write freely.  I'm not defending that reaction; I'm merely reporting it to you.  At a certain point, I stopped being able to write freely and it dried up my content and my drive to create it.

With Twitter, it is suddenly (or seemingly suddenly) acceptable for everyone to have an instant online outlet for their opinions and voices to be heard by the masses.  No longer is it necessary to be eloquent or thoughtful to maintain a captive audience.  As long as you are a "person of interest," for whatever reason, you will find yourself with a Twitter audience.  You needn't hang onto them by writing something compelling; you need only exist and periodically post status updates.  Lots of the time, Twitter feels to me like sneaking into the basement and doing a bunch of whip-its.  It's a quick kick that's not often very satisfying and sort of gives you a dull headache after spending too much time there.

What I realized, after spending the past several months hopelessly addicted to Twitter, is that I really miss writing.  I miss writing a lot.  140 characters never gives me that clarity I feel after writing a heartfelt, or silly, or bittersweet, or parental blog post.  140 characters doesn't allow me to voice my fears and take readers with me.  It doesn't allow me to do what I enjoy doing most: writing something that resonates deeply with a select group of people.  I think I'm a better writer than I am a quipper.  That's not to say that I won't still compulsively check Tweetie on my iPhone.  I'm certain that I will.  If a blog entry is a full meal, Twitter is dessert.  I guess I've been eating too much cake and I need to get back to balancing it off with a nice hearty steak from time to time.  Mmm...steak.

One thing I loved about Nickerblog was the community that spent time here.  I miss all of you guys, as corny as that sounds.  Some of you never left, and some of you (miraculously) still have this feed in your reader.  For that, I can't thank you enough.  I guess the one nice thing about leaving for a while is that I have thinned out the herd to an intimate little gaggle of readers.  I know it may seem like I write or tweet for the attention or the hits or the @follows, but that's really not true.  I like the interaction.  I like connecting with people, and it's something that just doesn't work as well in short bursts of Twitter braindump.

My god, it's like I've forgotten how to write.  I have the same feeling I have when I start running after a long time away.  It hurts and my form is bad...but it feels good.  I suppose it's nothing a little practice can't help.

LOST VLOGS

This blog isn't working right, for some reason.  It may be because I deleted it, reposted it, reformatted it, and then changed the design a million times.  Anyway, I started a Tumblr blog too.  While I work to figure out why old posts aren't showing up here sometimes, I'll probably post more there. 

So for the few of you who are still around here, and the even fewer that were around back when I was posting videoblogs (2004/5), I started poking around on an old hard drive and found a bunch of the original "videoblogs" and a bunch that never got posted.  Back then, there was no YouTube so the compression was a problem for me.  I had to compress the videos enough so that when I posted them on my .Mac site, they didn't eat tons of bandwidth and weren't too large for people to stream.  They looked pretty bad.  Content aside, I mean, they looked like videos used to look on the web: crappy.

Anyway, I'm going to take some of the original MPEG files and repost them on Vimeo as part of a series I'm calling LOST VLOGS.  (The quality will be way better, so it's kind of like a remastered re-release!)  I just bought a Flip Camera, so it's been kind of fun to ressurect the old Nickerblog vlogging style in the privacy of my own car.  It's a little archaic these days, but that's okay.  I'm an OG Vlogger, right?  RIGHT??
RIght.

Click below for more of the story and an ever-growing list of LOST VLOGS.  Coming soon...
The birth of HAWESOME.

http://shanenickerson.com/tagged/Lost_Vlogs

If I were a Zombie...

Ruben Fleischer let me be a Zombie in his movie.  This is what I looked like:

zombieland

intellivision

I kind of want this:

http://tinyurl.com/degupb



We had one as kids, and as frustrating as it was to be the kids who didn't have an Atari, but actually had INTELLIVISION, I'd kill to play Snafu or Armor Battle.

undead

As I sat in Central Casting, waiting to fill out a packet of paperwork that would allow me to become a zombie, I felt slightly out of place.  A squat older man, with an accent I could not identify stepped up to the reception window inside the massive office, which serves as a supplier of television and movie extras to various productions.

"I'd like to apply to be in movies," the man actually said to the woman behind the counter. 

I listened from the other side of the waiting room, smiling subtly at the simplicity of his sentence.

"Will you be able to keep me working every day?  I need to do this like a full-time job," he continued, now sounding more desperate than naive.  My smile faded.

"We can't guarantee work, sir," the nice woman at reception told him, "We can only put your name in the database and let you know of opportunities as they come up." 

I wondered if there are more people turning to extra work in this struggling economy.  I felt guilty for smiling at this man, who might very well have a family to feed. 

"Eighty bucks a day ain't gonna cut it anyway, buddy," I thought.

I was distracted from the conversation as I took this picture:

By the time I sat back down, the foreign man was storming out of the office.  "I came down here for a waste of time!" he griped as he walked past me and out of the building.  I smiled again, this time uncomfortably.  I could hear further grumbling as the door closed behind him.

I never thought I'd be back in an extras casting office.  In 1996, I registered at Cenex Casting (the then non-union sister to Central Casting), with the hope of obtaining the three magical SAG vouchers a non-union actor needed back then to join the Union.  It wasn't the only way into the Screen Actors Guild, but it was the best option I had.  I didn't know anyone that could hook me up in 1996, so I decided to try the "work as an extra and beg for any leftover SAG vouchers at the end of the shift" route.  Back then, non-union extras made 40 dollars per day.  FORTY.  I doubt it's much higher now.

As you might imagine, I did not last long in the "extras pool."  As excited as I was to work as a cop extra on the Adam Sandler/Damon Wayans collabo, "Bulletproof" (and yes, if you look closely you can find me), it was thankless work.  Extras are shunned and ignored on the set.  They are at the bottom of the industry food chain, and thus, are treated as slaves in steerage.  In fact, they are usually corralled on sets in giant "Extras Holding Areas" until needed to fill a scene with faceless and non-distracting life.  Unless you are predisposed to being shat upon by everyone, being an extra is probably not the right line of work for you.

A very pleasant woman named Brandy gave me a packet of paperwork to fill out.  It contained a fairly standard casting questionnaire, an I-9 form, and a couple of other forms that I barely looked at.  I left most of it blank, since I had no desire to be added to any sort of "Extras Database" at Central Casting.  I was here to be a Zombie, and as committed as I was to that end, it was breaking me down a bit, to have to go through this process.  "Will you do nude work?" was one of the questions on the form. 

A vision of me as a Zombie crying like Paul McCrane's character in Fame as I slowly pull off my blood-covered zombie shirt struck me. 

The woman told me they needed to take a picture to have on file.  I followed her to the digital camera, which was permanently mounted and pointed at a backdrop, DMV-style.  She asked if I was already in their system, and I chuckled.

"No," I told her.  "I can't imagine I am."

Except, I was.

"You are in here!" she said, pleasantly surprised.  "Looks like this was back in...1996?"

"Bulletproof," I thought.

"Do you want to see your baby picture," she asked me.

"Of course," I told her. 

She swivelled the monitor and I saw 25 year old me, complete with a striped shirt I remember hating, staring back at me.  Apparently, Central Casting absorbed Cenex Casting several years ago, and thus acquired their entire database.  Somehow, thirteen years later, I'm still in there.  I looked like a baby.  I felt an odd pang of sympathy for that poor, struggling actor suffering through a day at Cenex Casting just to set foot on a TV or Movie set by any means possible.  I wanted to snap a picture of the old scanned polaroid of me, but I was too stunned.   The camera flashed as she took my new picture, and she wished me luck on the set.  I wanted desperately to tell her that I was only doing this now because my friend Ruben is the director, and I thought it would be fun and cool to be a Zombie for the day.  "I'M NOT STILL DOING EXTRA WORK AFTER 13 YEARS!" I wanted to tell her.  I didn't.  I thanked her, and headed to my fitting in North Hollywood...

I arrived at CRC (Costume Rental Company) about a half hour later.  Half expecting a waiting room full of extras, I had to keep reminding myself that no one in the world cares what anyone else is doing...especially actors.  Knowing the negative stigma attached to Extras, I felt overly defensive; ready to justify my presence at an Extras fitting with a story like, "I'm not really an extra.  I CHOSE to be here, and I don't need this, and I'm already in SAG, and don't judge me and I know the director and lots of other stuff that exonerates me from being lowly!"  A terrible attitude, really, and proof that I care a lot more about what people think than I like to believe.  There was no one in the waiting room.  I was greeted by the wardrobe people, and was NOT treated as sub-human, but instead very warmly.  Apparently, I will be a "Jogging Zombie," and tried on the different options they had selected for that role.  It was quick and easy, and I was in and out.  They couldn't have been nicer, and I felt ashamed for expecting anything less.

Throughout the day, my backup plan was to bail.  If things got too weird or if the process sucked too badly at any point, I told myself that I was in a perfect position to walk away.  After all, reassuring inside voice told me, you don't NEED this.  It's a fun thing you asked to be a part of, for fun and stuff.  Also, fun!

But midway through the day, I realized I was being pulled by forces larger than me.  There's a good reason for me to have gone through all of this today.  The 13 year old picture of me as a younger man, with different goals (but on the same path that landed me where I am) haunted me as I left the fitting. I saw a bottle of something called "Real Blood," as I passed through the doorway, and as I exited the building, I started thinking about my upcoming stint as a non-distracting part of the scenery in Zombieland...

Stay tuned...

it's a Resistol

Guess where I'm going today.

*HINT: The halfway point includes margaritas and Mexican food.

it *is* Easter, after all

For a half a day, I thought I lost all of my writing from this defunct weblog.  Surely not a tragedy worth over dramatizing, but it was enough to make me pretty sad.  One of the perks of writing on a blog or web journal or whatever you like to call this medium, is that you are giving yourself a written history of important parts of your life.  I began to lament the loss of a journey through a career shift, the birth of two children, the transition from apartment to rental house to home ownership, and the various anecdotes from my past that once written, freed me from their clutches.  I thought about how tedious it would be to dig into Archive.org to recover as many of the 720 posts and almost 15,000 comments as I could find scattered in the cached pages of my former blog.  It saddened me more than I imagined it might.

When I killed this blog, I exported all of my entries and comments via Typepad's export option.  At some point over the last five or six months, I must have inadvertently deleted that 5mb file of writing.  Luckily, Time Capsule had it banked.  After some digging, I recovered a written history of my last five years in Los Angeles.  I felt like I found my wallet after convincing myself that it was gone forever.

So I imported the file back here onto this old Typepad blog.  I changed the format and design a little, but I assume most people read content via readers and aggregators these days.   I'm not sure if all of the links work anymore, or if the pages will load exactly right, but it's back from the dead.

Why?  Who cares.  I guess Twitter leaves me feeling only 140 characters worth of satisfied sometimes, and that's just not always enough.  So if it's too long for Twitter or if I just can't keep my mouth shut, I'll still post here with pictures or links, etc.  Kind of like the old days of Nickerblog, that I almost lost.

Like SciFi to SyFy, Nickerblog is now shanenickerson.com.

Thanks.

http://web.me.com/shanenick1

Netflix on Xbox...

might be the greatest thing ever.

No on 8