Pausing Mid-Leap

HELLO EVERYBODY!

It's now just over two weeks into what's supposed to be my epic, slow-paced, vagabondingesque traversal of these grand United States and I'm quite certain you're just DYING to know what I've been up to! So, where am I?

Camping at Yellowstone?
Blogging from what's left of the top of Mount St. Helens?
Tweeting from the edge of the Grand Canyon?

Nope.

I'm in Seattle. (Sad trombone.)

"Seattle," you're thinking, mouth agape, "But Matt! Why are you still there??  It seemed like you had finally achieved the necessary escape velocity! What happened? What about leaping?? You were supposed leap!!"

OK, yeah... I know. But, here's the deal:

As my departure time of "early morning, June 1st" quickly approached, everything was going according to plan.

• Final Mad Science shows were performed.
• Last day at work was completed.
• Goodbye party was thrown (see above photo).
• Moving sales were endured.

And, aside from my complete inability to sell my bed (which, by the way, is still available!), things were moving along quite swimmingly. Sure, it would have been nice to have some more time to reduce by 2/3rds the amount of crap I was attempting to shove into my car but, come hell or high water or other cliché, I was going to be out of Seattle and barreling headfirst into My Next Big Step™ (whatever the hell that would be) on schedule.

Then, on Memorial Day, literally TWO days before I was supposed to leave, I awoke much too early in a panic at all I had left to do. Before attempting to squeeze in an hour or so more of sleep before another day of packing and filling my vehicle, I figured I'd check my phone to see if I had gotten any e-mail. What was sitting in inbox that morning ruined not only any chance I'd have of falling back to sleep, but would guarantee that I wouldn't be leaving Seattle when I'd planned.

Flashback! January 2011!

It's the dead of winter and yours truly is battling Seasonal Affective Disorder and a severe case of depression over having to endure yet another miserable Seattle winter.

To feel like I was at least doing something to eventually get me out of this city were I to ever get this book finished, I searched the Internet for job opportunities. My expectations were kinda low: it had to in some way use my performing background and it had to be somewhere warm. That's when I came across the Carnival Entertainment website.  One of the positions they had listed was:

Entertainment Staff 

Become part the award-winning entertainment staff aboard Carnival’s “Fun Ships.” Carnival is looking for fun-loving, energetic individuals to be part of our team and help our guests create a lifetime of vacation memories by hosting activities, shows and special events. Full training is given but a strong theater background and some microphone technique are essential. The primary role of a entertainment staff or hostess is to assist the cruise director daily to create a fun and entertaining environment for the guests, as well as help cruise director and assistant cruise director in the overall management of the entertainment department. Entertainment staff are charge of running majority of the activities that happen around the ship and are often called upon by both guests and crew to answer questions involving all facets of the ship, including schedules, safety, concessions and ports of call. As such, prospective entertainment staff must possess interpersonal skills and must be organized and motivated. Essentially, middle management in the entertainment department, entertainment staff are often responsible for ensuring information and e-mails are properly communicated, essential paperwork is complete and meetings and drills are attended by all members of the department.

Totally what I was looking for, right?

Besides, I'd always been interested in working on a cruise ship but never seriously considered it because I could neither sing nor dance.  But here was a position that required neither!

Carnival was also the only cruise line was that accepted video auditions via the internet so I fired up the ol' Sony Vegas and edited together the following:


Not bad, huh?  I gotta say, I surprised even myself with how well it turned out.  Plus, after feeling out of my element for so long, it was good to be reminded that I'm actually qualified to do more than sell books and entertain small children.

I submitted the video to Carnival on February 13th and, less than a month later, I received the following e-mail from them:

Dear Matt,

Your job application for Entertainment Staff was reviewed and one of our Supervisors will be in contact with you for the interview.

Sincerely,
Carnival Entertainment

SWEET!

Goodbye short days and gloomy weather!

Hello cloudless skies and crystal blue water!

This was going to be great. Plus, don't worry, I wasn't going to put all my eggs in one basket (he said while putting all his eggs into this convenient wicker carrying case).

Then, I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

As the weeks passed, my enthusiasm waned.  It seemed this would be yet another in a series of disappointing "could have beens" that started the minute I decided to be an actor.

Since I'd put so much work into editing the video, I went ahead and posted it over on my Vimeo page and got a lot of great feedback. It really encouraged me to look more into other cruise ship and performing opportunities.  I needed to get moving again.  I needed to get in front of larger audiences.

And hey, if Carnival wouldn't call me, maybe I should go to them! Since they're based out of Miami, I'd found yet another reason to head back to Florida. Now, while I didn't want to move back for good, that goofy little peninsula has always been a great jumping off point for me. Plus, a lot of people I care about are there (along with a lot of my old stuff). Also, my former employer, Universal, is still there but, more importantly, so are all the cruise lines.

I needed to get back.

So, I finished the first draft of my book and starting planning my road trip.  I also prepared resumes and applications for all the different cruise companies.  My plan was to submit everything right before I left Seattle and, that way, instead of me sitting around and waiting for a response, I'd be doing something really fun, something for me.  No rush guys, I'll just be over here road-tripping.

This was gonna work.

Cut back to Memorial Day and I'm checking the e-mail on my phone when I find a message from someone named Eric from Cast-a-way Casting.  He was wondering if I could make myself available for an interview...

For Carnival...

In min-June...

In SEATTLE.

DUDE. I was overwhelmed with the cautious joy of a nerdy teen who's just realized he'd have to miss that Lord of the Ring marathon he's been anxiously waiting for because he just might actually have to go to the prom. With the girl he thought had rejected him, no less!

Obviously, I was thrilled they'd responded but I now had to change all of my plans at the last minute. Thankfully, my studio apartment hadn't been filled yet so my landlord was more than happy to get another month's worth of rent out of me. Plus, my friends at Mad Science said they'd do their best to keep me busy. And remarkably, it seemed I now actually had the extra time I'd wanted to get rid of some more stuff and (dare I say it?) enjoy Seattle.

My phone interview with Eric was last Monday (June 6th) and it went well enough for me to get an official invitation to the interviews, which were Wednesday. I don't have time at the moment to get into too much detail but let's just say it went extremely well. I'm still planning on leaving Seattle at the end of the month but there's a pretty good chance that, when I eventually get to Florida, I might actually have a job waiting for me.

Hot damn.

IMBD? Me??

Check this out: Matt Herold

Sweet!

And I have no idea why, but my STARmeter is up 227% from last week.

I'm guessing it's because I rule.

Women + DeLorean = Hot

Came across this article while researching my book:

Ask Me About My Flux Capacitor - New York Times

Photo Credit: Mark Rabiner for The New York Times

By RICHARD S. CHANG

Published: April 6, 2008

THINGS happen when you own a DeLorean, the sports car turned ultimate time machine in the “Back to the Future” films.
[...]
“Having a DeLorean is like 5 percent being a rock star,” said Lauren J. Reilly, a bubbly 31-year-old producer at the Deutsch advertising agency who owns a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 — the only model DeLorean built (and for just two years).
[...]
“One time I was down in Philly, and behind me I hear this megaphone from the cops,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Pull over!’ ”Before Ms. Reilly could comprehend her violation, an officer delivered one of the film’s famous quotes over the police car’s loudspeaker: “One point twenty-one gigawatts!” (She also gets a lot of “88 miles per hour!”) The officers watched her car while she and a friend got cheesesteaks.

It's funny but it's true. That car was such a huge hassle but it got everyone's attention. When we finally got to use the DeLorean for the Doc Brown show, my director and I joked that we wouldn't even need a script. (Sadly, what we ended up writing would really put that theory to the test.)

I was only 7 when DeLorean (the car) started being produced and not much older when DeLorean (the man) was arrested. Since cars, drugs and bankruptcy were at the bottom of my list of interests at that age, these events passed without my knowledge.

It wasn't until I was 11 when “Back to the Future” came out that I got my first glimpse of the DMC-12. From that moment on, as far as I knew, that was what a time machine looked like. Aside from in movies, I'd never seen that kind of car anywhere else. To this day, I've seen maybe two that weren't owned by Universal Studios and I don't think I've ever seen one on the highway. That car really does have a mythic quality to it.

There were only 8563 built. One of them was cut in half for the production of "Back to the Future". One sits at Universal Studios in California. One in Florida. One in Japan. And one, I got to drive for a living.

It was like hanging out with a movie star.

[Special thanks to Ken T. for having the foresight to take such a cool picture of the VIN plate.]

...rumble...

Actual thunder here today. The long, rolling kind, too. Loving it. (For a place known for rain, Seattle's seriously lacking in the theatrics of it.)

By the way, sorry about the sporadic posting lately. Been a busy week. (You think my posting's bad? You should see my emails.)

Hey, here's something interesting I recently discovered while trying to put together an audition DVD the past few days. Turns out that, after nearly 4 years of being paid by a major, international corporation to play a Japanese-speaking Doc Brown, I still can't do a decent impression of him in English.

Anyway, more posting soon.

Sono Jimusho ("The Office" in Japanese)

Around Christmas of 2004, after two long months of being forced to be a part of the scary-in-all-the-wrong-ways Halloween Celebration at Universal Studios Japan, a handful of the gaijin (non-Japanese) actors were forced by the powers-that-be to be part of something called "The Magic Christmas Tree Show". This included the actors playing Doc Brown, which included me.

The "show" started out as nothing more than a bunch of frustrated American actors reluctantly wearing some painfully gay band uniforms (that Universal had had in storage) and pushing around a Christmas tree on wheels (that Universal had also had in storage). But, after 2 weeks of "rehearsals" and an epic clash of egos, we invented some characters and gave it a plot. We even threw in a whole part where we'd do an exercise routine.

Yeah, classy entertainment.

Remarkably, it worked. In any other country on the planet, it would have been a disaster but, in Japan, they loved it. I guess there's something about tall, non-Asian guys exercising in uniform. Even these uniforms...

I'm the one on the left, with the cupcake on my head.

But all that's another story.

The reason I bring this up is because, during that time, the cast and I shared two guilty pleasures. The first: pirated copies of "The Apprentice". (This is something which none of are really proud of. Not so much because they were pirated episodes of "The Apprentice" as much that they were episodes of "The Apprentice").

The second: the complete DVD set of Ricky Gervais's The Office.

Between our shows, we'd quote Dave Brent and Gareth Keenan. We'd fight over who got to be "team leader", we'd call George Michael and The Pet Shop Boys "bummers", we'd point at nothing and say "Monkey!" before going on set.

Anyway, just as the Holiday Season drew to an end, we'd heard that there was going to be an American version of "The Office". Being the proud Americans we were, we all agreed that the American version would be total crap and that there was no way they could make it work.

Obviously, the rest of the U.S. didn't get our memo.

I did eventually watch the first episode and, while it wasn't bad, it just felt wrong. The British version has made such an impression on us, it was hard not to be biased.

But, after catching this bit Steve Carrell did on Saturday Night Live, I may have to give the show another shot...

One of the writers has obviously spent some time in Japan. Pam giggling behind her hands, coworkers singing English songs in karaoke, 10 second hyper-commercials, robotic dogs. They even have an exercise routine. Classic.

Extra credit to the actors for actually speaking Japanese and for looking so much like Jim Halpert and Dwight Schrute.

UPDATE: A few Offices from around the world.

And Ricky Gervais goes to sleep in a bed of money.