Jeez Jon

Dice Are Rolling

This is as close to liveblogging as I'm going to get.  Currently, I'm sitting in our booth here at the PolyCon 25 Gaming Convention up in lovely San Luis Obispo, helping to promote Fellowship of the Dice.  Tom and our co-director Matthew Ross are off at our second screening right now in a small (but populated) screening room.  We had an excellent screening yesterday, where the crowd was into the film right from the start. 

The added benefit for being at this convention this weekend is that it was at PolyCon 23 where we shot the bulk of the interviews for Fellowship of the Dice.  So, this is a bit of a homecoming for us.  A lot of the interviewees are here, which is pretty awesome for us to see. Another nice side bit from this is a mention in the San Luis Obispo Tribune blog about the film.  Sure they misspelled my name, but hey, the title of the film is correct and that's the most important thing.

My life for the past several months has been working in reality tv during the week and then going to gaming conventions a couple times a month.  While I'm excited to get the word out about the film, it is a bit scary to put ourselves out there financially to do so.  I do feel that all this hard work will pay off eventually.  We've met a couple uberfans of the film, one of which watches it almost every day.  That's pretty awesome... odd to be sure, but still pretty awesome. 

Of course, one down side to this busy schedule is that I'm pretty tired a lot of the time.  Right now, I'm on my second solid week without a day off, and I'll have to wait a full week for next one.  Fortuntately, the adrenaline kicks in at least once a day, and that feeds my Type A personality, so I tend to be okay.  I tend to feel the effects of this constant activity usually during my hour-plus commute home for work, where the combination of my crabbiness and LA traffic makes for some... colorful dialogue.

Finally, two mentions:

One, congratulations to my brother Matt & my new sister-in-law Celeste.  They got married this week in Italy.  I'm beyond thrilled and excited for them, and rather bummed that Tom and I couldn't make it.

Two, Happy Birthday, Tom! You are too cool for words.

Home Town Boy Done Good

One of my hometown papers, the Oak Leaves, has done a piece on me and Fellowship of the Dice.  A very nice article, if I say so myself. 

d20, Paper, Scissors

There is an article about me and Fellowship of the Dice in this week's Backstage West newspaper, LA's actor industry rag.  While eating some delicious Japanese curry, I had a lovely and charming time being interviewed by writer Sarah Kuhn (who also interviewed me for her blog Alert Nerd).  I would link you to the online version of article, but alas, Backstage West has locked it off for their online subscribers only. So, if you're in the Los Angeles area and are by a newsstand, go fork over the $4, flip over to their Self-Starter column and check me out.  Sarah is sending out a bunch of copies to me so Mom, I got you covered.

Tom and I also have been working our tails off the past couple of weekends going to conventions in both Los Angeles & in the St. Louis area screening Fellowship of the Dice and selling DVDs.  The responses have been great and very affirming.  People seem to like our nerd movie.

Getting All Your Queues In A Row

Fellowship of the Dice is now available on Netflix.  That's right, people -- my movie's now rentable.  I'm pretty psyched about it.  We're also screening the movie at the Gamex Convention this weekend here in LA and in honor of that, I did an interview about Fellowship of the Dice with the popular geek site Alert Nerd where I flaunt my geek cred.

Now, you may go adjust your Netflix queues...  I'll wait.

Why I Love SciFi

Do you want to read a rave review of Fellowship of the Dice from SciFi.com?  Of course you do.

Name Checked

Here's a round-up of Fellowship of the Dice related bits around the internet:

• The Critical Hits interview with Tom and I.
• Our first negative review, via DVD Talk.
• Our first positive review, via EN World.
• Our first pretty good review, via The Numbers (middle of the page).
• A press release (and positive comments) about the film at Gather.com.
• A nice mention from pamie.com.  (Thanks, Pam!)
• And, of course, the Amazon page.

What's That In The Distance? Oh, Right... A Milestone

It's my birthday on Saturday, and it's a bit of a big one.  I'm not 30 anymore and I won't be 40 -- my age will be equidistant from both of those marks.  I'm being vague here, just in case any Hollywood types come trolling. Knowing that neither logic nor word problems are their strong suits, I think I can skate by on a little obfuscation here.  At any rate, it's a Big Birthday, where I vault out of one demographic into another, but still in the generally large demo to which advertisers cater.  It's also one of those birthdays that I attached a "Big Goal" to when Tom and I moved here.  As in "I'm going to win an Emmy by..."  I don't see that happening between now and Saturday, but hey, hope springs eternal. 

While I'm not necessarily thrilled about getting older and wishing I were further along career-wise, I do have other things going on. 

• While  my stint on Basic Cable Documentary Pilot ends on Friday, I did have two interviews for new gigs that would start next week.  Keep your fingers crossed: either gig would be cool.
• Tom and I are doing well (which is always good) and we're going to Palm Springs this weekend for a nice (and inexpensive) weekend trip where we'll lounge around, have margaritas, play board games, and just chill out.   
• And Fellowship of The Dice goes into wide release in stores across the US and Canada next Tuesday, April 24th!  So... that's pretty damn cool, too.

And finally, I do have my health, though now I'm hitting a Big Birthday, my health insurance rates are going up.  Booooooooo. Unfair, yo.  Unfair.

Checking In...

I was going talk at length about how this weekend went at ConQuest SAC with our little gaming movie (it went over well, not a lot of sales), but considering what happened yesterday at Virginia Tech, I'm really not in the mood to go into too much detail. Fellowship of the Dice had three screenings over the weekend, which had small but very enthusiastic audiences. One guy turned to us after the 3rd screening ended and said this movie validates him being a gamer. And if that isn't the best kind of compliment, I don't know what is.

A big shout-out to Miss Katie for helping us out this weekend. Katie, you are a total trooper.

Fellowship of the Dice will be in stores across the US and Canada a week from today, and currently available online via our website. That's really about it with me right now... that and checking the news about Virginia Tech updates, and worrying about my college-professor-Virginia-resident brother and his family.

Portland, Whoo!

There are a few certainties in life:  death, taxes, the swallows returning to Capistrano, a rainfall after you washed your car... and me getting a call for an audition when I'm out of town.  Like clockwork, people.  In the airport shuttle from PDX to the Portland Airport Sheraton, I turn on my cellphone and boom, there's a voicemail from my commercial agent for an audition.  I had already booked out with them, saying I wasn't in town.  But no.  We settle in to our room and my commercial agent calls again with another audition for the same day.

Commercial Agency Intern: Hold on, Jon.  We need to coordinate your two auditions--

[HOLD MUSIC PLAYS]

Commercial Agency Intern:  Okay, here's the info--

Me: Let me make it really easy on you.  I'm out of town.

Commercial Agency Intern: Oh.

Me: Yeah. I booked out a while ago. I'm in Portland.

Commercial Agency Intern:  Oh, okay.  I'll let 'em know--

Me [hopefully]:  But I'm in town on Monday.

Commercial Agency Intern: ...I'll let 'em know.

It. Never. Fails.

Anyway, the Portland premiere went well.  While Tom and I were disappointed we didn't sell as many DVDs as we'd have liked, we had nearly 100 people see the movie during the Game Storm 9 Convention.  The responses were overwhelmingly positive, so on that level, it's very exciting.  We had a lot of our fellow nerds and dweebs tell us they loved the movie and wanted to use it to show their friends what exactly our odd hobby is like. 

We did get a nice mention in the Blog Section of the Portland Mercury.  We also had a great interview with Tom, Aimee Graham, and myself with Ranger Mike and Andy Z of KPSU 1450 AM.  The podcast can be heard here. Andy Z. was a total sport as well, taking us to a great Thai restaurant for dinner and then driving us back to the hotel for our first screening Friday night. 

And, on one final note, I now see why my former coworker Bill Harper went on and on about Portland. Holy moley, it's one of the nicest places I've ever been.  It's so clean, so friendly, and so pretty.  Thursday night we went into downtown Portland and Tom, Aimee and I strolled around, taking it all in.  The three of us, being the hardbitten Angelinos we are, could not stop remarking about how nice Portland was.  It has a great urban feel, it's rather hilly, and just has such a pleasant vibe.

Aimee:   Even the homeless people up here have it more together than the ones in L.A. 

I can't wait to go back to Portland...
 

Northwestward Ho!

In mere minutes, Tom and I are off to Portland, OR for the premiere of Fellowship of the Dice at Game Storm 9.  Very exciting and rather nervewracking.  Let me quickly sum up what else I've been up to:

• Ended on Urban Basic Cable Competition Show, and then with a paid day off (!), started up on Basic Cable Documentary Pilot for the same company.  Less pay but possible promotion if this were to get picked up. Keep your fingers crossed.
• Went out with Katie and others on Saturday where Katie had a full-on fangirl meltdown over a clock.  Very funny to watch.
• The recurrence of cancer made me feel sympathy for both Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow.
• Watched both Borat and This Film Is Not Yet Rated.  Both were entertaining and neither were what they were cracked up to be.  Borat made me laugh a good deal but it also felt a bit long and rather padded.  Rated is one of the rare films were I thought the deleted scenes on the DVD should have replaced actual scenes in the film.  With Rated, I was far more interested in seeing how the filmmakers fought the MPAA on getting NC-17 ratings for their films and less on director Kirby Dick's hiring a private detective in getting dirt on the ratings board.

Okay, gotta run.  If I have time, I'll check in whilst in Portland. Wish us luck!