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shadowkatApril Question a Day memage:
11. Have you ever flown a kite?
Yes. When I was a kid - which was sometime in the 1970s?
12. What’s your favourite breed of dog?
I am partial to spaniels, but also adore collies.
13. Have you ever volunteered to do something long-term?
Yes. I worked with the Legal Aid Association of Western Missouri and the Domestic Violence Coalition as a volunteer for about a year or well over in the 1990s. And, volunteered with a social justice organization in my church for about two-three years.
14. It’s International Laverbread Day. Have you ever tried it?
No. (Per the youtube link, it is essentially seaweed turned into a kind of a paste. Richard Burton called it the Welsh Cavier.) The Wiki link wouldn't come up for some reason, instead I got an AI description and well the youtube link on what it is. They call it laverbread - because they knead the seaweed, and to eat it - mix it with oatmeal and use bacon grease to make it into cakes.
The youtube link is kind of fun and informative - it's an Asian woman trying Welsh Laverbread and showing how to make it. I enjoyed it more than reading a Wiki entry.
15. Leonardo Da Vinci was born today in 1452. What comes to mind when you think of Leonardo? Have you ever seen one of his works?
Mona Lisa, also The Anatomical Jesus and the Last Supper. Or the Da Vinci Code - which my parents thrust on me when I visited them in the early 00s.
16. In 1922, Annie Oakley set a women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row. Have you ever been clay pigeon shooting?
No.
17. Have you ever seen bats flying in your area? Have you ever seen a bat up close or seen a bat house attached to a tree?
Yes. Fruit Bats are rather common on the East Coast. And when I was a kid in West Chester, Pa - I saw them all the time.
***
Having quite a bit of down-time at work (albeit not nearly as much as many television actors and retail employees do, or flagmen for that matter), I listened to actor podcasts while playing with a spreadsheet.
It's a trend now. Actor podcasts. Not everyone has them. Just the struggling actors who require side-hustles. And considering there's a 99% unemployment rate in professional acting? There's a lot of actors hunting side-hustles.
The podcasts range from:
1. actors re-watching the television shows they were in over 20 years ago, and somehow never got around to watching until now. (This, folks, is among the reasons that you do not ask television actors about the plot or what they think their characters are doing next or their character's motivation, or who their character should be with romantically. They are the actor not the writer. They don't know any more than we know. That's a writer question. Actors are employed to perform what is on the page. They can interpret it - but it's television? If the writer disagrees with the interpretation or the director or the producers do - then it will be changed.)
It is amusing for a little while to watch an actor who was in the series, watch the show - and be perplexed as to what is happening and wondering why is that happening??? Charisma Carpenter for example was confused as to why Cordelia was fighting demons alongside people she didn't like. And wondered at a separate point - who sired Dru, and actually thought Angel sired Spike. (She was on both shows - it was stated on both shows. But not to Cordelia, apparently.)
Katee Sackoff is watching Battlestar Galatica (it's amusing to see how horrified Sackoff is at some of the explicitly violent and disturbing content that aired during that series - it was by Ron Moore, who is a bit like the guys who did the Game of Thrones Series and Kripike who did Supernatural and the Boys - and has a proclivity towards violence, specifically sexual violence, and in graphic detail. In short if you have problems with violence, torture, and rape - steer clear of any shows run by Ron Moore and Kripike), Terri Hatcher is watching Desperate Housewives with her daughters (Hatcher irritates me, and I was never a fan of Desperate Housewives - I watched, but casually and for well other actors), Charisma Carpenter is watching Angel and Buffy (entitled The Bitch is Back, Charisma is..well, a lot more like Cordelia than she thinks? Honestly, I think she just played herself), and Juliet Landau is re-watching Buffy and Angel (with a friend, and Drusilla (who is insanely annoying - I gave up eventually - a little Dru, can go a long way. At one point Juliet says Dru is driving her crazy - and I'm thinking, you and me both.).
Charisma's Bitch is Back much like Landau's Revamped and Sackoff's podcasts, have interviews with lots of old cast mates and friends. Charisma did one with Seth Green - and they discuss trying out varieties of psychedelic drugs. And the effects of the drugs. And how it lifts you out of your ego and provides a more expansive experience, but it's better to do in your twenties, without all that shit layered over the ego getting in the way. Seth Green went on about it for a bit, reminding me far too much of a guy I dated in undergrad and not in a good way. Oh, Seth, and you were doing so well.
Seth does explain why he had issues with Buffy. Even though, generally speaking, he enjoyed the experience and appreciated working with Joss - and had known Joss, Sarah and Hannigan for a long time. He grew up with Sarah and Aly. Also Green was in the original Buffy film - his scene was cut. He played a vampire with bad teeth. He was not allowed to do anything but Buffy during the 12 months or so of filming. Which included the inability to take care of his own personal health needs - like see a dentist for root canal. It wouldn't have been so problematic - if he was actually doing something on the show? But all he did was show up, say one or two lines (which honestly anyone could say) and leave. And a movie option came up - where he'd be working with some interesting folks - and Whedon said no, I can't spare you. Green had gone to him personally, not through lawyers. He gets why Whedon said no - now - it's a writer thing. The writer doesn't want to spare any of the characters in his tool box.
Doesn't justify it, but he gets it.
They also talk about the "mean girl" vibe going on at the set, which Charisma now blames Whedon for - and thanks Seth for seeing her and attempting to dissipate it a bit. What caused it - is Whedon wrote lyrical scripts - which had to be said precisely the way he wrote them - comma's, the's, and all. That's hard for an actor to memorize and do well. It's actually why Shakespeare and Mamet are hard - because there's no room for ad lib.
This may explain the difficulty with the Reboot/Revival - it didn't have the same level of quality - because Chloe Zhao likes to let the actors find the characters, and ad-lib, while Whedon was more of a perfectionist and wanted the actors to provide what was in his head. Emma Caulfield tells the story of how Whedon kept making her do take after take after take after take after take of Anya's famous monologue in the Body. She wasn't crying right. He wanted one tear. No two tears. She wasn't upset enough. No, too upset. And Emma had to pee really badly and was starving, and everyone on the set was starving because they hadn't had a meal break since six am, and it was well past the lunch break. And all actors state - he wanted precision. Some were better at it than others - Marsters was (he came from doing Shakespeare and plays), Gellar was (soaps) but others struggled more.
Charisma really did - because as Green mentions, Whedon created his own language or way of speaking - which made the show universal and not dated.
A kind of natural rhythm. But that is hard for actors to act. And they were under-compensated, or paid far less than most. Basically they were doing three times the work as the cast of Friends, and making a quarter of the amount that cast made. (Buffy dates better than Friends, and is by far the better series.) Another series with that special cadence was Gilmore Girls, also West Wing.
2. Actors interviewing other actors (usually their friends and fellow cast mates - ie. other struggling actors)
* Michael Rosenbloom does "Inside of You" - he's a good interviewer but the ad breaks are annoying. He knows a lot of people - so he has a good range of guests on his series, and he gets a lot of information from them. He also talks a lot about mental illness and therapy on his series. And how difficult it is to work in the business and get work.
I listened to one with Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, The Boys, etc) - which was interesting. But overshadowed by Michael's awe and envy of Ackles' opportunities. Some were ironic - Ackles was discussing how he got a major Western film role that was going into production soon, about an aging gunslinger, and starring Alec Baldwin. (He ended up leaving the film part way through, and before the shooting occurred. Baldwin is notoriously difficult to work with. But the interview was before all of that happened.)
Ackles apparently had a similar relationship with Jessica Alba on Dark Angel, that James Marsters had with Sara Michelle Gellar. Bickering siblings. Both Albae and Gellar were under a lot of pressure and were difficult at times - and both Ackles and Marsters knew how to push back on that a bit, and make light of it.
Ackles reminds me a little of Green - in that he's rather easy going. Also has a firm grasp on the business. Seth Green states that as much as he loves the business - it can tear you apart if you don't protect yourself or know how to navigate it, and it's even harder for women. Also that it is a small business - and sooner or later you run into everyone in it. He grew up Leo DiCaprio, and Charisma was on the set of Eating Gilbert Grape. They name drop a lot in these podcasts. Green mentioned he figured out he was going to be a character actor at the age of 12. Ackles experience is different because he came from soaps. But soaps gave him the ability to handle memorization of lines rapidy, and he feels relatively little to no anxiety on stage or screen. He's comfortable in front of the camera. Reminds me of Marsters who is the same way.
Ackles made me want to check out The Boys again, but I restrained myself, because...I know Kripke, and I tried two to three episodes - it's gory and graphic in it's violence? Example? They show a man getting ripped apart on screen. Along with some decapitations. And just no.
Ackles plays a really dark version of the Captain America character.
Others are:
Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner - Dropping Names (a fun one is where they invite Alan Tyduke and Nathan Fillon over, who in turn pimp their podcast Once We Were Spacemen).
Alan Tyduke and Nathan Fillon - Once We Were Spacemen (which is mostly them riffing)
Maurice Bernard - State of Mind (has a lot of soap actors, along with other celebrities of sports, music and acting) - discusses mental illness (take away? An alarming number of soap opera actors have bi-polar disease.)
Katee Sack-Off - she interviews a lot of folks prior to doing the rewatch
James Marsters and Mark Devine - Schmactors, and VidIdiots
There are more, obviously, I just don't feel like rambling all of them off?
When I say it's the latest trend - I'm not exaggerating. Actors have a lot of side hustles. They kind of have to? Acting is a difficult profession to make a living in.
11. Have you ever flown a kite?
Yes. When I was a kid - which was sometime in the 1970s?
12. What’s your favourite breed of dog?
I am partial to spaniels, but also adore collies.
13. Have you ever volunteered to do something long-term?
Yes. I worked with the Legal Aid Association of Western Missouri and the Domestic Violence Coalition as a volunteer for about a year or well over in the 1990s. And, volunteered with a social justice organization in my church for about two-three years.
14. It’s International Laverbread Day. Have you ever tried it?
No. (Per the youtube link, it is essentially seaweed turned into a kind of a paste. Richard Burton called it the Welsh Cavier.) The Wiki link wouldn't come up for some reason, instead I got an AI description and well the youtube link on what it is. They call it laverbread - because they knead the seaweed, and to eat it - mix it with oatmeal and use bacon grease to make it into cakes.
The youtube link is kind of fun and informative - it's an Asian woman trying Welsh Laverbread and showing how to make it. I enjoyed it more than reading a Wiki entry.
15. Leonardo Da Vinci was born today in 1452. What comes to mind when you think of Leonardo? Have you ever seen one of his works?
Mona Lisa, also The Anatomical Jesus and the Last Supper. Or the Da Vinci Code - which my parents thrust on me when I visited them in the early 00s.
16. In 1922, Annie Oakley set a women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row. Have you ever been clay pigeon shooting?
No.
17. Have you ever seen bats flying in your area? Have you ever seen a bat up close or seen a bat house attached to a tree?
Yes. Fruit Bats are rather common on the East Coast. And when I was a kid in West Chester, Pa - I saw them all the time.
***
Having quite a bit of down-time at work (albeit not nearly as much as many television actors and retail employees do, or flagmen for that matter), I listened to actor podcasts while playing with a spreadsheet.
It's a trend now. Actor podcasts. Not everyone has them. Just the struggling actors who require side-hustles. And considering there's a 99% unemployment rate in professional acting? There's a lot of actors hunting side-hustles.
The podcasts range from:
1. actors re-watching the television shows they were in over 20 years ago, and somehow never got around to watching until now. (This, folks, is among the reasons that you do not ask television actors about the plot or what they think their characters are doing next or their character's motivation, or who their character should be with romantically. They are the actor not the writer. They don't know any more than we know. That's a writer question. Actors are employed to perform what is on the page. They can interpret it - but it's television? If the writer disagrees with the interpretation or the director or the producers do - then it will be changed.)
It is amusing for a little while to watch an actor who was in the series, watch the show - and be perplexed as to what is happening and wondering why is that happening??? Charisma Carpenter for example was confused as to why Cordelia was fighting demons alongside people she didn't like. And wondered at a separate point - who sired Dru, and actually thought Angel sired Spike. (She was on both shows - it was stated on both shows. But not to Cordelia, apparently.)
Katee Sackoff is watching Battlestar Galatica (it's amusing to see how horrified Sackoff is at some of the explicitly violent and disturbing content that aired during that series - it was by Ron Moore, who is a bit like the guys who did the Game of Thrones Series and Kripike who did Supernatural and the Boys - and has a proclivity towards violence, specifically sexual violence, and in graphic detail. In short if you have problems with violence, torture, and rape - steer clear of any shows run by Ron Moore and Kripike), Terri Hatcher is watching Desperate Housewives with her daughters (Hatcher irritates me, and I was never a fan of Desperate Housewives - I watched, but casually and for well other actors), Charisma Carpenter is watching Angel and Buffy (entitled The Bitch is Back, Charisma is..well, a lot more like Cordelia than she thinks? Honestly, I think she just played herself), and Juliet Landau is re-watching Buffy and Angel (with a friend, and Drusilla (who is insanely annoying - I gave up eventually - a little Dru, can go a long way. At one point Juliet says Dru is driving her crazy - and I'm thinking, you and me both.).
Charisma's Bitch is Back much like Landau's Revamped and Sackoff's podcasts, have interviews with lots of old cast mates and friends. Charisma did one with Seth Green - and they discuss trying out varieties of psychedelic drugs. And the effects of the drugs. And how it lifts you out of your ego and provides a more expansive experience, but it's better to do in your twenties, without all that shit layered over the ego getting in the way. Seth Green went on about it for a bit, reminding me far too much of a guy I dated in undergrad and not in a good way. Oh, Seth, and you were doing so well.
Seth does explain why he had issues with Buffy. Even though, generally speaking, he enjoyed the experience and appreciated working with Joss - and had known Joss, Sarah and Hannigan for a long time. He grew up with Sarah and Aly. Also Green was in the original Buffy film - his scene was cut. He played a vampire with bad teeth. He was not allowed to do anything but Buffy during the 12 months or so of filming. Which included the inability to take care of his own personal health needs - like see a dentist for root canal. It wouldn't have been so problematic - if he was actually doing something on the show? But all he did was show up, say one or two lines (which honestly anyone could say) and leave. And a movie option came up - where he'd be working with some interesting folks - and Whedon said no, I can't spare you. Green had gone to him personally, not through lawyers. He gets why Whedon said no - now - it's a writer thing. The writer doesn't want to spare any of the characters in his tool box.
Doesn't justify it, but he gets it.
They also talk about the "mean girl" vibe going on at the set, which Charisma now blames Whedon for - and thanks Seth for seeing her and attempting to dissipate it a bit. What caused it - is Whedon wrote lyrical scripts - which had to be said precisely the way he wrote them - comma's, the's, and all. That's hard for an actor to memorize and do well. It's actually why Shakespeare and Mamet are hard - because there's no room for ad lib.
This may explain the difficulty with the Reboot/Revival - it didn't have the same level of quality - because Chloe Zhao likes to let the actors find the characters, and ad-lib, while Whedon was more of a perfectionist and wanted the actors to provide what was in his head. Emma Caulfield tells the story of how Whedon kept making her do take after take after take after take after take of Anya's famous monologue in the Body. She wasn't crying right. He wanted one tear. No two tears. She wasn't upset enough. No, too upset. And Emma had to pee really badly and was starving, and everyone on the set was starving because they hadn't had a meal break since six am, and it was well past the lunch break. And all actors state - he wanted precision. Some were better at it than others - Marsters was (he came from doing Shakespeare and plays), Gellar was (soaps) but others struggled more.
Charisma really did - because as Green mentions, Whedon created his own language or way of speaking - which made the show universal and not dated.
A kind of natural rhythm. But that is hard for actors to act. And they were under-compensated, or paid far less than most. Basically they were doing three times the work as the cast of Friends, and making a quarter of the amount that cast made. (Buffy dates better than Friends, and is by far the better series.) Another series with that special cadence was Gilmore Girls, also West Wing.
2. Actors interviewing other actors (usually their friends and fellow cast mates - ie. other struggling actors)
* Michael Rosenbloom does "Inside of You" - he's a good interviewer but the ad breaks are annoying. He knows a lot of people - so he has a good range of guests on his series, and he gets a lot of information from them. He also talks a lot about mental illness and therapy on his series. And how difficult it is to work in the business and get work.
I listened to one with Jensen Ackles (Supernatural, The Boys, etc) - which was interesting. But overshadowed by Michael's awe and envy of Ackles' opportunities. Some were ironic - Ackles was discussing how he got a major Western film role that was going into production soon, about an aging gunslinger, and starring Alec Baldwin. (He ended up leaving the film part way through, and before the shooting occurred. Baldwin is notoriously difficult to work with. But the interview was before all of that happened.)
Ackles apparently had a similar relationship with Jessica Alba on Dark Angel, that James Marsters had with Sara Michelle Gellar. Bickering siblings. Both Albae and Gellar were under a lot of pressure and were difficult at times - and both Ackles and Marsters knew how to push back on that a bit, and make light of it.
Ackles reminds me a little of Green - in that he's rather easy going. Also has a firm grasp on the business. Seth Green states that as much as he loves the business - it can tear you apart if you don't protect yourself or know how to navigate it, and it's even harder for women. Also that it is a small business - and sooner or later you run into everyone in it. He grew up Leo DiCaprio, and Charisma was on the set of Eating Gilbert Grape. They name drop a lot in these podcasts. Green mentioned he figured out he was going to be a character actor at the age of 12. Ackles experience is different because he came from soaps. But soaps gave him the ability to handle memorization of lines rapidy, and he feels relatively little to no anxiety on stage or screen. He's comfortable in front of the camera. Reminds me of Marsters who is the same way.
Ackles made me want to check out The Boys again, but I restrained myself, because...I know Kripke, and I tried two to three episodes - it's gory and graphic in it's violence? Example? They show a man getting ripped apart on screen. Along with some decapitations. And just no.
Ackles plays a really dark version of the Captain America character.
Others are:
Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner - Dropping Names (a fun one is where they invite Alan Tyduke and Nathan Fillon over, who in turn pimp their podcast Once We Were Spacemen).
Alan Tyduke and Nathan Fillon - Once We Were Spacemen (which is mostly them riffing)
Maurice Bernard - State of Mind (has a lot of soap actors, along with other celebrities of sports, music and acting) - discusses mental illness (take away? An alarming number of soap opera actors have bi-polar disease.)
Katee Sack-Off - she interviews a lot of folks prior to doing the rewatch
James Marsters and Mark Devine - Schmactors, and VidIdiots
There are more, obviously, I just don't feel like rambling all of them off?
When I say it's the latest trend - I'm not exaggerating. Actors have a lot of side hustles. They kind of have to? Acting is a difficult profession to make a living in.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-18 03:07 am (UTC)Yes. When I was a kid in the 1950s
12. What’s your favorite breed of dog?
We had a cocker spaniel when I was growing up, and my icon here on LJ/DW for many year was my sister's sweet cocker, Buffy. But I like German Shepherds and Great Danes a lot, too
13. Have you ever volunteered to do something long-term?
Not really. I was too busy working to earn money in high school, and had other things to worry about in college and beyond.
14. It’s International Laverbread Day. Have you ever tried it?
No. Didn't know what it was till
15. Leonardo Da Vinci was born today in 1452. What comes to mind when you think of Leonardo? Have you ever seen one of his works?
His paintings and his ingenious technical scribbles. They had a Da Vinci painting at an art museum in Moscow I visited. I would have liked to have seen it, but there was such a crowd of Soviet citizens around it, I saw nothing. As unpleasant as Soviet life could be, I figured 'Let them see it, I've seen and done a lot of good things in my life. Let them have this without me muscling in.'
16. In 1922, Annie Oakley set a women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row. Have you ever been clay pigeon shooting?
No. I've only rarely shot a gun in my life.
17. Have you ever seen bats flying in your area? Have you ever seen a bat up close or seen a bat house attached to a tree?
Yes. I've told the story before somewhere here. Basically one came down the chimney one night at our house when I was alone. I spent a good hour trying to chase it out, without success. Finally, it got tired and I was able to cover it with a cloth and take it safely outside. It did much amazing flying, just outside my reach, before I returned it where it belonged... I sometimes barely saw bats swirling in the night air when I was outside with my telescope. Those times I cheered them on because they were hunting the mosquitoes that were after me.
no subject
Date: 2026-04-18 05:37 am (UTC)