Dara Torres, the 41 year old USA swimmer and Olympic medalist gave this quote in her interview after winning the silver medal with her relay team. Her statement is such an inspiration to everyone and gives me hope and inspiration that even as I get older, there is no age limit to achieving your dreams.
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I’ve got tech recruiters from agencies all over Los Angeles calling me everyday - almost twice a day pitching me jobs and my number is not even listed anywhere. Tech recruiters have always used somewhat “grey” techniques in trying to find candidates such as asking people to refer their friends or colleagues to receive a referral fee, or cold calling companies asking for random people until they find a tech person who they can pitch a candidate, or pitch a new job. Now these agencies are trolling LinkedIn cold-calling companies and lying that they are connected to you through LinkedIn. What really annoys me is their fake way of trying to establish a friendship with you asking “what are your plans this weekend?” I’M NOT YOU’RE FRIEND! Why the hell should I tell you? And do all tech recruiters use the same script? I’ve been asked the “what are your plans this weekend” question multiple times by multiple recruiters at multiple agencies. AND NOW the new technique they are using is “I’m not calling to pitch you a job, but to ask you for a reference”. TWO recruiters from TWO different agencies almost used those exact words. Is there some shady tech recruiter conference that these people all go to?
I should open up my own tech staffing agency - but run it like the Hollywood studio system back in the old days. Hollywood studios used to sign actors with whom they saw potential and would groom them to be movie stars. I would sign top programmers who could not only code but were attractive and had really good presentation skills and then represent them through their entire career through the myriad of jobs that tech people go through - or help them start their own company. Top Hollywood agents and managers do this now and just collect a 10%-15% agency/management fee or establish a back-end deal with the actor.
On another note - why do tech people need to use recruiters anyway? In this day and age of LinkedIn and other social networks it should be easy enough for anyone to find a job through their friends and end up with a higher salary since they aren’t going through a recruitment agency. The true hustlers will never need to use an agency. They will find business opportunities for themselves or even better, create their own opportunities.
Don’t get it twisted. In many ways I’m not mad at this situation. There’s obviously no recession in the internet/tech sector.
2 CommentsI surprisingly received two calls from my agent today. On the first call my agent wanted to know if I’d be interested in doing a U5 (under 5 lines) or non-speaking role on General Hospital. Of course I said “Yes”! It’s been a long time since I’ve been on a set or done any acting professionally so I’m happy to take a small role. I joked with my agent asking if General Hospital was back in Hawaii - because it seems like every time the plotline goes to Hawaii I get a call and end up with a small role on the show. If I get this role this will be the 5th episode of GH I’ve appeared on.
The second call from my agent concerned a commercial print audition for Adidas - basically a modeling job. The shoot would be over 3 days and I would receive a $5k buyout for the shoot. Not bad. Then tonight I read the breakdown and noticed that for wardrobe it says “will also be shirtless”. Crap. I’m the skinniest I’ve ever been since high school yet I’m still not as ripped as I’d like to be. I still have bad memories of another audition for Bud Light where I had to be shirtless for the audition and I was 30lbs heavier (not in a good way). Well, it is what it is.
Along the same note I looked at the Xflowsion site to see if the new infomercial was there and it is! But I see they re-tooled the new version of the infomercial and I’m no longer in it. That’s ok with me - but I did find my filmed testimonial in the raves section - which proves to me that I’m still not as ripped as I’d like to be.
I’m going running in the morning.
0 CommentsHarvard Magazine has a transcript of J.K. Rowling’s commencement speech where she talks about benefits of failure and the importance of imagination. Her speech is elegant, humorous, very inspiring and a must read. Here are a few quotes from her speech:
2 Comments“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
“…You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.”
“Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.”
“One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
Scientific American has an incredible article based on a discussion with three experts on creativity. Here are some quotes from the article which resounded with me:
0 Comments“There’s so much power in a new idea taking shape and changing the way people live and act. Often the rest of us are in awe, or we are even afraid of a new idea, and sometimes our fears spur us to learn more about it.”
“There are four different skill sets, or competencies, that I’ve found are essential for creative expression. The first and most important competency is “capturing”-preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. ”
“The second competency is called “challenging”-giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas. The third area is “broadening.” The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections-so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things. And the last competency is “surrounding,” which has to do with how you manage your physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become.”
“You have to put up with dry spells and keep creating in the face of them.”
“You have to learn not to fear failure and even to rejoice in it. ”
“The creative individual thinks of failure as a new opportunity.”
“…failure actually stimulates creativity directly. It really is valuable.”
“I think that creativity is contagious and that the best thing we can do for children is to model for them what it’s like to be a creative individual.”
Youtube videos can now contain links to other Youtube videos and can also contain annotations (think VH1’s pop-up video). This news is MAJOR! Think about all the possibilities!!!!!
You gotta check it out RIGHT NOW!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw6YPh-fAko
1 CommentPeople just don’t want to sleep.
Or so it may seem. I’ve stumbled upon several articles about the use of Provigil by healthy individuals to enhance cognitive functions. All of the articles say that the drug does have very positive effects on cognitive functions, but what is the downside? The possibility of a serious skin reaction.
Men’s Health also has an article on polyphasic sleep patterns (referred to as the uberman sleep pattern) and how it may allow you to spend more time awake rather than sleeping by taking multiple short power naps instead of sleeping for a straight period of time.
What is this obsession with working?
It’s a problem that I also have. My problem is that I feel like it’s a race to achieve all of my dreams. But what kind of quality of life can you expect to have if you don’t take some time for a siesta, to meditate, to reflect, to just spend time with friends and family?
These are questions I struggle with everyday.
(BTW the title of this article refers to a famous research paper dealing with the limits of working cognitive memory.)
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This movie poster for “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” caught my eye over at Quicktime.com. I saw Jet Li’s name attached to it and I instantly knew that the movie probably had something to do with the Qin Dynasty and the Terra Cotta Warriors. What a coincidence since Heather and I just visited the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the Bowers Museum last weekend. The trailer looks pretty cool but of course the movie takes liberties with the historical account of the Qin emperor. If it wasn’t for the Qin storyline and Jet Li I’d probably wait to see it on video, but now I might actually see it in the theater.
I might have to go watch “Hero” again since it’s another Jet Li movie that deals with the Qin Dynasty.
1 Comment“The New York Times reports today about Michael Hollick, the actor who provided the voice of Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV. Although the game has made more than $600 million in sales for Rockstar Games, Hollick earns nothing beyond the original $100K he was paid. If this was television, film, or radio, Hollick and the other GTA actors could have made millions by now. Hollick says, ‘I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.’ Is it time for video game actors to be treated as well as those in other mediums?”
First let me set the record straight. There should be no distinction between “video game” actors and actors in general - other than the fact that most video game work is non-union voiceover work. There are plenty of actors here in Hollywood that do video game work. But the problem is that SAG and AFTRA have not set up a residual contract for video games. But they should. Right now SAG and AFTRA are negotiating residual contracts for online video and they should do the same for video games.
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I was sitting there in Studio DNA perusing through this month’s GQ magazine noticing all the stylish short haircuts and decided it’s time to try a new look. In the past this would have been a big deal and my agents would look at me with disapproval telling me that I would now need to go get new headshots. But now that I no longer have commercial representation and I’m concentrating on producing my own shows it doesn’t matter as much anymore.
Hmmm. It is about time to get some new headshots…
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