I think I love these guys. I especially liked the Amazing Stuntmen bit.

I’m on a meme roll lately, it seems. 200 things, 3 things, everythings… I keep seeing this kind of entry fodder in other blogs and using it here. So why not continue? For today we have a photo meme:

Leave me comments listing three things you want me to take a picture of and I’ll shoot and post them here. I reserve the right to completely ignore perv requests (unless they’re my kind of perv), but then you’ve already seen me in one of Beth’s bras — how much worse could it get?

“1. Zoe with green hair.”

“2. Zoe on a bungee ride at a church fair last weekend.”

“3. Zoe going really high on a bungee ride at a church fair last weekend.”

“I want a picture of what your face looks like when you’re about to check-raise.”

And another request is in, this from my close personal friend David:

“How about a pick of my journal up on your computer screen (heck, you can show your whole work area)?”

One last bit about the name dropping, an interesting story (or maybe not — you be the judge) about one of the kids who slept over last night.

Zoe asked me to come to her class once for Show and Tell — she wanted to show off my tattoos. (The one on my left arm — the biggest one — has her name spelled out in it, which is why I was to be her Show & Tell item. Click here to see it.) So I showed the kids that one and they all oohed and aahed and Zoe got to puff up with pride, and then I pulled up my other shirtsleeve to show the Elvis tattoo.

Now, The King is long before their time, so I figured I should explain who he was, so I asked, “Have any of you ever heard of Elvis Presley?” The kid who slept over here last night, whose mother is an actress, piped right up and stopped me in my tracks:

“I do! I do! My uncle is married to his daughter!”

I stopped for a moment and considered that statement and realized that in fact it was true — her aunt had once been married to the actor who went on to briefly marry The King’s daughter. So, technically, she was right.

Which meant that I was only four degrees of separation from Elvis. Through a 3rd grader.

Hey, I’ll take it.

Still bored, still wasting time at the keyboard here. From the other room comes peals of children’s laughter — Zoe is having a sleepover with two kids from school. So I’ll write about the kids … sort of.

Zoe attends a private school that’s popular in the entertainment community. Lots of celeb’s kids are there, so we rub elbows with Hollywood’s movers and shakers at school functions. It’s a little weird sometimes, straddling the divide between their world and mine, between having to budget your vacation days from your job to cover the school holidays versus jetting off to Paris at a moment’s notice and letting the nanny take care of the kids while you’re gone. But they’re just normal people, people just like us … but with a fuck of a lot more money.

Without naming names for the Google spiderbots and thus violating these folks’ privacy, here’s a rundown of some of the folks we bump into from to time.

For tonight’s guests, one’s mother was the subject of a hit song by the 80’s band Toto, and the other’s father is a member of a popular vocal jazz group named for a New York City borough “X-fer.”

Last year I was looking forward to this. It didn’t happen — last year. This year? Oh yeah. I want to invite mom over for a sleepover.

Parents of former classmates who’ve moved on to other schools include two producers of an NBC sitcom featuring a gay lawyer and his female best friend, an actor famous for a role as a ticket scalper in a 1982 “fast” movie about the “times” at a California high school (he’s a really great guy, I like him a lot), and a singer whose first name is also that of a department store and whose last name is a neutral color.

In the schoolyard and at school events we frequently see:

• A prominent actor who was in two movies about talking gorillas
• An actor most famous for three recent science fiction movies about a computer generated world (his godchild is here tonight, Beth tells me)
• An actor who’s not a very “old man” who recently appeared in a “serious, black” role in two Harry Potter movies
• A “Monkish” fellow and his actress wife who once nearly had her “body snatched.”
• One of Charlie’s original angels — the smart one
• A prominent actor who played a Don in three Mafia movies and a Cuban drug lord with a scar on his face in the 80’s
• The founder of a musical duo named for “crying” for “what scares you” that just reunited and me and Beth are seeing them in concert next month
• The object of Gib’s (and my) fantasies and the namesake of one of my all-time favorite movies The Sure Thing
• A pretty lifeguard from a TV show where they “watched” the “bay,” who was also once the TV “charge” of a guy named “Charles”
• An “always-lazy” member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (I was a major geekboy the day I met him, let me tell you)
• The T-1000 Terminator from T2.
• …and numerous other behind-the-scenes entertainment industry players whose names I recognize from the trades but I don’t know their faces.

Good lord, I’m an idiot. I’ve been trying to be all coy as I write this and not use their names or even link directly to them on IMDB because I didn’t want their names to even appear in the HTML link code … and I just realized IMDB doesn’t use names in the link; it’s an internal numerical code. I could have just linked straight to most of these people without being all disingenuous talking about “a movie with talking gorillas” and all.

Okay, fine. I’ve gone back and stuck in all the direct links I could have done in the first place. But you know what? I spent so much time and meager brainpower being all clever about dropping their names without actually dropping their names that I’m going to leave all that cleverness in there, even though it’s no longer necessary — and not all that clever. Feh.

What a tool. A name dropping tool.

Slow night here, so I’m wasting my time at the keyboard taking quizzes and reading blogs I’ve already read and torturing Beth in the next room by blasting country on my iTunes. This little graphic here, the product of five wasted minutes, shows all the states I’ve been in (and I hope not the ones that “vote” Republican next month).

create your own personalized map of the USA

Beth is doing the Blogger Boobie-thon again this year, so of course I had to help her. It’s hard being married sometimes, what with all the chores and favors and honey-do’s; sometimes it seems like it’s just one thing after another. And then sometimes it’s hard because you’re getting to take semi-nudie pix of your wife and help “compose” the picture, which is something completely different.

So, yeah, she’s semi-baring her boobies for free now and totally baring them later to people who donate more than $100. I’ll get to take that picture too. It’s hard, doing those kinds of chores.

Anyway, because I’m all about being supportive and have no shame and am nothing if not a joiner, I figured I’d contribute a picture to the Boobie-thon too. (Yes, they accept mens’ pictures — they even request them, so it’s not just me and my ego working here.) Unlike Beth, though, I’m not going to be coy about it. I’ll go ahead and show you the picture I sent the Boobie-thon. Enjoy:

Now go, donate, kick down a few bucks to fight breast cancer. If your eyes have stopped bleeding, that is.

The debate is going on right now, but I haven’t seen any of it yet. I’m Tivoing it for later. But when I do watch it, I’ll watch it with an even more cynical eye because this seems to me that it’s very, very plausible:

Does the Commander in Chimp wear a wireless earpiece so the brains of the outfit can play Cyrano de Bergerac and whisper sweet nothings (and complete sentences) in his ear during these debates? I’ll bet he does.

I have an 8:00 a.m. flight to San Francisco Friday morning and I’ll be home in time to pick Zoe up from school. Send some good vibes my way (and you ROUSes out there, you go ahead and send me your patented bad vibes — they’ll probably help me even more) and I might have some good news to report.

I’m flying Southwest. (Ugh.) Fortunately, I’ve been watching the A&E TV show Airline, so I’ve picked up some valuable tips for flying Southwest. Example: Don’t get drunk before boarding. You tend to miss your flight that way.

(As an aside, I almost feel like a grown-up when I do stuff like this. Flying up to San Francisco just for a few hours? How mature of me!)

Here’s an excerpt from an email my 75-year old mom sent me last night:

I had a callback on a Staples commercial which, I’m sorry to report, I did not get. Boo Hoo. But I’m just happy to be getting sent out at all considering my commercial agent just died and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. [Emphasis mine – Chuck]

Yes, Mom’s a sweet old girl — for someone who’s in the business.

Shamelessly stolen from Gavin. Because why not?

3 THINGS…

…I am wearing right now

1. Peace Scuba T-shirt
2. 8 gauge silver 1/2″ CBR, right ear
3. New Balance crosstrainers

…on my desk

1. 3-week old stack of unopened mail
2. 2 quarters, a nickel, and 10 pennies
3. A paintball gun I’ve been planning to eBay for more than a year

…I want to do before I die

1. Sell a big budget script
2. Learn to fly
3. Watch Zoe fall in love

…good things about my personality

1. Comedy, baby!
2. Sarcastic
3. Trustworthy

…bad things about my personality

1. Sarcastic
2. Curmudgeon
3. Anger issues

…I like about my body

1. All the parts are there
2. All the parts work
3. All the parts are mine

…I don’t like about my body

1. Certain parts aren’t as hairy as they used to be
2. Certain parts are hairer than they used to be
3. Certain parts are larger than they used to be

…most people don’t know about me

1. I’m an ordained minister
2. I ran away from home at age 7 with a suitcase full of socks
3. I was banned by the court from entering the city of Burbank, CA

…I say the most

1. Are you all right?
2. Yo.
3. Alllllll righty then!

…I want to go to

1. Greece
2. Cozumel
3. Bed with Charlize Theron

…names that I go by

1. Chuck
2. Keith
3. Asshole

…screen names I have had

1. Opus
2. CHUD
3. Wordsmith