Thursday, April 10, 2008

Crabbydad: Aftra Hours...

I got a letter in the mail today from AFTRA telling me that I have $342.84 in an IRA account that I didn't even know I had. I don't even know if I'm still a member of AFTRA, actually. I had to join it like nine years ago when I was hired to do voice-over for a show on FX called "Fast Food Films."

The show was kinda half-assed and I might even go so far as to call it a tad slap-dash, but it was an incredible gig. The Old Lady and I were living in Chicago, and I was able to record all my shit in my crappy "studio," which was really just an old Mac and microphone shoved into a hall closet, and then I'd upload all the files to the studio in L.A. and wait for them to send me my oodles of cash. Oh, and since I recorded and edited all my own stuff, I somehow finagled it so I got paid as the "session engineer," too. Fucking brilliant, younger me!

Of course, it only lasted about a year and a half, so the free crabbycash dried up pretty fucking quick. The shitty thing is, though, I just looked it up on IMDB, and I'm not even listed in the goddamn credits. I mean, I was basically the only guy (voice) on the show. They'd just take shitty old B-movies like "Wizards of the Demon Sword" and then recut them into a wacky five minute movie about personal hygiene, or something. So they'd just run the movie and then I'd come in before and after the commercials and say something kooky like, "Gee, I sure hope Billy learned his lesson about keeping his sword clean and properly sheathed! Be sure to stay tuned... coming up next, we'll see why it was so hard for a young John Travolta to stay alive inside a plastic bubble!" Boing!

Ah, who gives a shit. The show fucking sucked.

By the way, Mr. Z just got out of bed and walked in here, completely asleep mind you, and just stood staring at the floor until I got up and walked him back to his room. I tucked him in and said goodnight, and he looked up and said, "I don't know what to put on my Galaxy Wondershirt." I told him we'd figure it out in the morning, but I should've just said, "Well, why don't you put 'My dad worked on a TV show for the FX Network in the late 90s and all he got was $342.84 in a heretofore unknown IRA account... and this t-shirt.'"

And what the shit is a Galaxy Wondershirt?! Man, what I'd give to do the voice-over for one of his dreams!

1 comment:

Jason said...

Galaxy Wondershirts? I smell business venture! With Mr. Z's artistic talents, I'm sure he could create a hip design. And with his musical talents, this could be the biggest music-fashion crossover since Sean-Puff-Daddy- P. Diddy-Puffy-Diddle-Diddle-the cow jumped over the moon-Combs!