Acting Blog Goes To Sleep

I have this acting blog I just didn't update so I've decided to pull it from the front of my acting site. I'll be posting any work-in-progress here and saving my site for the professional storefront. I might relaunch that thing when I'm acting for a living, but who knows.
http://stevepowersactor.com/blog1/

Photo Albums

Job Transition

I am now looking at my last two days at Midway Austin. Monday morning I walk into Junction Point Studio and start work in a "new" job with many of the people that were involved in ION Storm at it's peak. (See the "Peace Out Ion" post below)

Go Kat!

Kat just after her first public Belly Dance! She owned the floor! With her are Misty, me and Daniela. After the show they served some Middle Eastern food and I tried a few things I've never had before. Very tasty stuff there tonight... AND THE FOOD WAS GOOD TO! Get it?

In front of the Hyde Park Theatre. That's my friend Matt there with the Mullet-From-Hell, and our brave director Justin studying something important.

Waiting to begin tech rehearsal for the "Rat of Glen Rose" at the 2006 Fronterra Fest. That's Susan there with the gallon of poison. Mike as the giant rat, he gets most of the poison. The other Mike is taping the show for us, and you are looking at Scott's back.

You have the right to remain silent, punk. I wasn't wearing pants in this photo.

Dr. Powers

Froggy LeSuer in "The Foreigner"

At the premier of "The Fantastic Escape", our 48 Hour Film Project entry. We did well, winning Best Acting Ensemble, Best Screenplay, Best Costumes, Best Sound Design and Best Choreography. This was the first time I got to see myself on a BIG screen. Awesome.

Matt, Brent and myself doing "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged". The show is about three borderline idiots that decide to do all the works of Shakespeare in one 90 minute show. Each of us play a shitload of characters and I alone have over 20 costume changes. Gives me lots of chances to dress like a woman.

Holly and me. I am the one on the right. And I shaved off the beard. People tell me it makes me look years younger...

This is a project I am working on now. Daisy flying a rocket through space.(Stating the obvious) I am experimenting with a cat shaped space suit.

Happy Mother's Day!

Playing around with Photoshop. This is a rendition of a meteor shower that Holly and I watched in our back yard. We laid in the hammock and watched through the branches of our old oak tree.

This is the same tree in our back yard, but during a snowstorm. There are not many substantial snowfalls here in Austin.

Me and my lovely wife Holly. I am the one with the beard. The beard is not an accurate representation of what I look like now. I have had two plays in a row that required me to have some facial hair, mutton chops for one and a goatee for another. As of now I am not doing any stage productions and my face is clean shaven.

Daisy. Over the years I have adopted a number of nicknames for her and she is equally ambivelent to all of them. I call her Butt, Butt-Butt, Magnificent Daisy, Botswana, The Daze, and FartBucket. Holly doesn't think much of my pet names (Get it? Pet names?) but tolerates them. Daisy doesn't seem to give a crap what I call her as long as it is in a nice tone of voice.

Willow Likes Christmas. This photo is from Christmas 2004, but I just found it again and thought I would share it. Sadly we cannot have a Christmas Tree where the cats can reach it. We must keep our tree in the cat-free zone in the front of the house, because they will work tirelessly day and night to destroy it. Knock loose every decoration, pull off all of the needles, hang from stings of lights until they dangle to the ground. Did you ever see how the Grinch snaked up through that tree in the animated "Grinch that Stole Christmas"? Tat is what Willow does. In the photo above she looks like she is gazing calmly at the light, but the camera lies. (This photo was taken 5 feet above the ground, by the way) Hiro pulls off and eats the plastic tree needles, and that can't be good. Too bad, because Daisy likes to just lay under the tree on the tree skirt. She lookes like a little mound of snow under a tree, all lit up by the multicolored lights.

Holly takes delivery of her new car. This thing is really nice.

Foreigner Cast and Crew

Lunch with Moorcock

Recently I was fortunate enough to have lunch with Michael Moorcock. I was very surprised to learn that he lives in a small town not far from Austin, and even more surprised when my friend Harvey began corresponding with him via email. Moorcock has written a slew of novels that I freaked out over when I was a teen, and as an added bonus I recently discovered that he has written song lyrics for tunes that I loved in the 80's as well. (Veteran of a Thousand Psychic Wars, anyone?) These books were a staple of my formative fiction and hold a place now in my personal pantheon of truly influential work.
Now I have had many experiences of meeting people who I adored simply by their work only to learn that the artist behind them was a little disappointing in person, if not a total train-wreck of a human being. Very rare has an encounter with an admired artist been inspirational for me. Mr. Moorcock was an outstanding exception.
He was so personable, so open, so interesting I would have like to sit there and talk with him until the sun went down. He is an extraordinary person with extraordinary experiences that he is willing to share. He is a bit like a time machine offering a glimpse into the golden age of science fiction writers, he related perspectives of a Londoner living through the blitz that I have never read in any history book, and his experiences from a lifetime of writing and publishing are simply incredible.
I had no idea what to expect upon meeting him, but I certainly did not expect our lunch to extend into near dinner hours, to leave with my head full of dreams. I feel so fortunate to have met him. I thought it would be because he wrote books that entranced me for decades, but in truth it is because he is a delightful man who is a pleasure to speak with.

This is Hiro Now
Holly and I heard him in the lowest level of the parking garage where I worked in the summer of 1999. A wailing pitiful cry that echoed through the place and was VERY hard to locate. You know, the acoustics of a parking garage. You could slowly zero in on the cry, but as soon as you got remotely close he would become frightened and go silent. After an hour in that garage sneaking around and listening we finally determined that he was somewhere in or around the giant white Suburban. Others wandering through the garage could not find him. Only while I was sitting there exasperated and silent for a while did he start to cry, and from my vantage I could tell he was inside the wheel of a spare hanging on the bottom of the truck. I lay on my back and tried to reach up in there and get the cat (at that point I couldn’t tell if it was a young adult or a kitten, but the cry was so frighteningly loud I was sure it was large enough to be armed with razor claws and needle fangs). Each time I blindly reached for it the cat made a spitting noise and scared the crap out of me. I was being a big baby so Holly slid up under the truck, reached in there and grabbed him. Heh heh. He tried to bite and claw but was so weak he could do nothing, and a second later Holly was holding him. He was so tiny and weak we rushed him straight to a 24-hour emergency veterinarian. Well, on the ride to the vet’s office we both realized that we could not give this cat to a shelter, and by the time we had arrive there he already had a name. Hiro.
He had a HORRIBLE first few days with us. A prolapsed rectum was only the start of his troubles, but a SERIOUSLY incompetent vet (or just plain sadistic, still not sure) made things much worse. This "doctor” just sewed the kittens rectum closed and gave us some canned formula to feed it. The formula turned solid in his system but little Hiro couldn’t poop! At the time I did not know what was distressing him so much, and the night he started trying to poop right through the stitches and crying in pain was one of the worst nights ever. To be so helpless while he was in such pain… Well, our regular vet gaped in horror as he learned what “treatment” the other vet had ordered. Our guy fixed Hiro up in about a day and the little boy cat was a healthy bounding kitten in no time.
Now he is all grown up and likes to get on the table and knock everything off onto the floor. That's appreciation.

This is Hiro the day after our veterinarian fixed him up.

Peace Out Ion Storm

Seven years ago I got there and the future was really bright and exciting. I have the highest order of respect for the people who have worked there on Thief 3 and Invisible War, but looking back on Ion we peaked with the release of Deus Ex. I will not even begin to go into the struggles that happened, how many times Deus Ex zigged when a zag would have ended it. Somtimes I am amazed that it ever survived. The Hurdles it cleared were many and challenging.
Being in the awards ceremony pictured above has been one of the most thrilling moments in my career. I mean, I was sitting at a table in the nominee area near Will Wright and the Sims team. The Diablo II team was on the other side. It was like the Gaming version of the Academy Awards. "And the Game of the Year award goes to..." I will never forget that night.
The death of Ion was very slow and agonizing, but it was also a period of tremendous personal growth. Much good came out of that place, and I will miss it for a long time to come.
Every other day I drive by that building and it is hard to concieve that the offices are silent and empty now. At night all of the windows are dark except the lamp in one office that I guess no one remembered to turn off. (for any ex-ion guys, the lamp that still burns is in the DX3 Programmer Pit. Matt, weren't you the last one outta there?)
The office that I now work in is right across the street from the Ion corpse, and so far I have caught myself on autopilot everal times taking the Mopac exit.
There is something I learned when Origin died. All of the energy and spirit that created the great games there did not die with Origin, it just moved out of that building and spread through other teams, other projects. It continued to live and grow in new places. The same is now happeing with Ion Storm.

Something That Happened When I Was A Kid

Stephen F. Austin was a road that went on forever. Only five years before had the road been blacktoped by the “low bidder” for the job. The county paid bottom dollar to an elderly man named Boots who mixed asphalt with a shovel in the bed of his truck and did the whole road himself. Sometimes we would sit on our bikes and watch him heave molten pitch onto the road, 100 degrees in the shade and 90 percent humidity. I thought his heart would burst. Why did I not help him? Well... It was too hot.

Surprisingly enough, the road was a swiss cheese of potholes and pits, which made it a challenge to navigate on a bicycle at high speed. Pastures spread out on either side of the road. Not the green rolling fields the word “pasture” brings to mind in most people, but a dry, brown field covered with thousands, thousands of fire ant mounds. The cows stand equidistant between mounds, heads down in the low, dead grass.

Close to the junction of Stephen F. Austin and Peach Point Road there was always a strong stench of decay. This was the area where <name witheld> would throw the corpses of his hunting dogs when they had been killed dragging down a wild boar. This is also where he threw the legs, entrails and heads of the deer those same dogs caught and killed, in season or out. He was one of the most sadistic assholes in our neighborhood, but this story is not about him. More on his exploits later…

Deep ditches that line Stephen F. Austin Road on either side are eternally swampy, filled with cattails, beer bottles, mosquito colonies, and old furniture and household appliances. And snakes. Lots of them. These ditches are home to the Cotton Mouth Water Moccasin, the only snake I have ever personally observed that does not fit the adage “they are as afraid of you as you are of them”. I have seen them leave the far riverbank and go after friends in the water. I have seen them drop from an overhanging branch into a passing canoe just to get at the people inside. The Jones Creek Moccasin just hates people, and one in particular really hated Danny.

During a daily trip to the Diamond Mini-Mart on our bikes we spotted a big one stretched out across the road sunning itself. It must have been a seven footer, as big as a tree trunk and an evil black. It was very common to see snakes that had been mangled by trucks on this road, so we weren’t all that excited right off. As we closed in, it became obvious that this one was laid out ramrod straight, and the dead snakes never maintained this posture. We could hardly believe our luck! Hearts and pedals pounded as we accelerated to attack speed!

Now, there is something that takes hold of a person when they get into a car. Surrounded by steel and glass, hundreds of horsepower under command, isolated from the outside world we become more aggressive. Our id takes on physical life through the car. Well this same thing takes place in a kid’s mind when he is on that bike. “I am on this bike, speeding faster than I could ever run, and my feet do not even touch the ground. I am invulnerable to snakes!”

It was this instinctive mentality that drove us at breakneck speed toward the opening maw of that devil. We assumed a flying wedge formation, Danny at the point aiming for the center of the reptile. I trailed him by a few yards to his left, taking aim for the head. What happened in the next few paragraphs passed in a time no more than three seconds long.

Danny’s front tire ran directly over the center of the snake and my front wheel was right on target, but I never hit the head. In a move that was so fast that it defies description, the head swung around and buried wicked fangs into Danny’s rear tire just as it ran over the snake. The bike was moving so fast that the momentum of the spinning tire wheeled the snake up into the air, stretching it out to full length so that, for a fraction of an instant, it towered seven feet over Danny’s back. Then it fell down.

At the apex of it’s swing, the snake let go of the tire and draped over the back of Danny’s neck and shoulders. As it thrashed and writhed around attempting to get a firm hold on its new mount Danny was attempting to keep the bike upright through a particularly nasty set of potholes while not losing speed. To come to a stop would only make it easier for the snake to strike. To crash would mean that he, the vengeful snake, and the bike would become one twisted heap. Slim chance that he would be able to separate himself before being bitten repeatedly.

As we sped along we tightened up our formation. Artie made a one handed grasp of the tail of the beast to yank it loose. The ophidian eyes locked briefly on my white knuckles on the handlebar, and it leapt for them, fangs extended. Because of Artie’s grip on the tail, it did not have the reach to get me. The combination of its leap toward me with its tail being tugged was enough to dislodge it from Danny, and it tumbled onto Stephen F. Austin. We wheeled our bikes around a safe distance away (about 50 feet) and stopped to assess the capability of our adversary, to determine if another pass was warranted. It eyed us coldly from the center of the street, and we faced each other like old west gunfighters for a time. Eventually we decided that we would continue on to the Diamond Mini-Mart, and if the creature was still there when we returned we would let him have it.

Perhaps we lingered awhile longer at the Mini-Mart than usual. I got the traditional Welch’s Orange soda and a Marathon Bar. You know, you can’t eat a Marathon Bar fast. Took in a couple of games of Dig Dug, talked to Deputy Gobel when he patrolled through the parking lot.

We were all secretly relieved when the snake was gone during our return trip. If he had been there our egos would have demanded another run at him. Even if that were not the case, it would have been unnerving to try and skirt such a large snake on such a narrow road. When we reached the location of the previous battle we all road in the center of the road, equidistant from the ditches on either side. We also passed that point as quickly as possible, not daring to put a foot on the ground until we were far away.

Act II Dialogue

I am supposed to be off-book for act 2 by tonight. (that is where you have all the dialog memorized but can still call for lines when lost) I think I have it all, but there are a few spots that I will probably get stuck. The play we are rehearsing is "The Foreigner", and I am playing Froggy LeSueur. We open March 4th.

Daisy. She is our Number 1 cat. Daisy was born in Palestine Texas, the runt of the litter. Holly had to train Daisy to walk herself. When I first met Holly, Daisy did not want to be around me at all. I would "sneak pet" her by reaching around Holly and scratching her head. As long as Daisy thought Holly was the one doing the petting she was content, but when she saw my hairy hand she would freak out and bolt out of the room. Over the past 8 years I have won her over, and now she sleeps on my feet at night and hangs in the office with me when I am working. She is the sweetest cat I have ever met.

My First Day Here

Will I be a Blogger read by millions around the globe? Will I mispell so many words and use such bad grammar that no one will take me seriously? Do I want to be taken seriously? Will I forget my username and password, thus never posting here again?
Stay tuned and find out the answers to these questions at the same time I do.