I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to [...]]]> (The following is an excerpt from my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane. It can be purchased by clicking on any of the roughly 400 banners adorning this site, or by clicking here. It’s also available on Amazon.

I’ve posted the first 20 chapters (roughly 55 pages of PTSA) on this site. Links to each of those are at the end of this post, or you can download all of them as a pdf by clicking here.

Wearing my Producer Hat is the hardest, most complex thing I have to do when working in the entertainment industry.

Ironically, there’s a simple reason for this: answering the question “What does a producer actually do?” is nearly impossible, and it’s asked of me more than any other thing.

My dad will ask me this question at least once, without fail, on the rare occasion we speak. My usual answer is, “The producer makes the project happen. He gets it done. Goodbye.” It’s vague, but also the truth.

The Producer Hat is a “no matter what” hat, and usually involves either asking for money to get a project made, or screwing people over. Often both. For example, let’s say you needed a music track for a project, and knew of two composers who could do the job.

The first step is simple in concept, but difficult in execution: you have to get an investor to give you the money you need to fund the production of your project. (Without the project, you don’t need the music.)

Like I said, this part is a “one plus two equals three” procedure, and primarily involves telling your investor they’re all but guaranteed to make their money back, when in reality, there’s a 99.99% chance they’ll never see it again. (If that sounds risky to you, don’t worry – there are all kinds of lawyering tricks you can use to avoid getting sued.)

This part is especially hard for me, because the potential investor usually starts asking stupid questions like, “How do you plan to make money on this?” or “Do you have any sort of business plan I can look at?” It gets me all flustered and angry, because they’re blatantly trying to destroy my artistic vision.

Anyway, let’s assume you have your funding, because you found somebody smart enough not to mess with the details of why you need their money. Now you put on your Producer Hat, and deal with your two music composers, who you want to create an ominousy, impending-doomy track for the climax of your project.

This is where the fun starts. You might have both of them work on it, telling each that they have the job. Then, you may use subtle trickery to manipulate events, causing each composer to find out about the other one. This makes them both even more desperate to get the job.

In the end, you have two ominousy, impending-doomsy tracks, and you get to pick the one you like better, telling the other composer that “things are delayed a bit”.

Be sure to stress that you’ll be in touch, because this thing will get going again soon, and you have a lot of other things coming up, too. You say this even if you have nothing coming up.

I’m not sure how or why I became good at this, but I’ve always thought my older brother was wearing a metaphorical Producer Hat for most of his childhood. I’m man enough to admit I was, too. We were constantly screwing each other over.

In retrospect, this was probably our mom’s fault – she’d raised us as twins, even though he was older by four years. (I know what you’re thinking, and yes, the whole family eventually agreed she was crazy.)

My brother’s name is Tim, and growing up, Tim had two loves – airplanes and Star Treck. How and if these two loves connect to one another, I’ll never know, but his love of them was equal.

A third love was pencil sketching, a skill in which Tim had singularly unique talent, yet no desire to pursue beyond the recreational level, which I always thought was a shame.

When Tim learned he would never be able to command his own fictional starship, he turned his career attentions to his other love, airplanes.

This is skipping ahead a bit, but today, Tim is a Colonel in the Airplane Riding Marshall Taskforce Agency, or ARMTA, where he makes both his peers and his underlings refer to him as “Colonel T”.

(ARMTA is an important part of how our country’s airplane rides run safely. I read one study that said without ARMTA, airplane rides would be +/-4000% more at risk of crashes, resulting in a vastly increased number of fiery, crashy, airplaney fireballs falling to the Earth. These fireballs would be full of dead airplane riders, who died from being on fire.)

Like I said, our mother raised Tim and I as twins, which always made things awkward for my actual twin sister, Kristin. There’s not much to say about her, really. It seems in the twins-gestation process, I received what looks, personality, and talent were available to be gestated.

Maybe this contributed to my mom’s madness – this dual-twins game she’d set up. She’d often have to tell people we were triplets, while focusing on the fact that Tim and I were twins, when really Kristin and I were the twins.

Back to my big brother – Tim and I were close, which meant I learned a lot about Star Treck, and even more about airplanes, since the continuity and mythology of Star Treck baffled me. For example – how could Mr. Spok talk if he had pointed ears and he was an alien?

Colonel T and I haven’t spoken for years – in fact, I haven’t seen Tim since I was 12, when he ran away forever.

When Tim ran away, I stayed behind, substituting “playing with my brother” with “thinking about airplanes” in my little kid daily planner.

Wow.

That was supposed to be all about wearing a Producing Hat, and it turned into a story about my estranged brother. It appears I’ll need to acquire an Editoring Hat.

“And oh! What a fine hat it would be!” he declared, feeling it was a very literary thing to write in his airplane book.

Brad Radby’s Foreward, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 14, Chapter 15, Chapter 16, Chapter 17, Chapter 18, Chapter 19, Chapter 20, Chapter 31

Skyler got back to me with more specific thoughts on the Sunkist logo changes he didn’t care for.

honestly there is nothing wrong with the logo itself the only reason why i dislike the new logo is the fact that they [...]]]> (Is this a new tattoo for Kobe, or has he had this for awhile?)

Skyler got back to me with more specific thoughts on the Sunkist logo changes he didn’t care for.

honestly there is nothing wrong with the logo itself the only reason why i dislike the new logo is the fact that they wanted to change the logo why mess with a classic? your mom did good, just 50 years down the road pepsi and coca-cola are gona have there same logos of course and i think its a shame our future children will never see the classic sunkist look.

Well, this is true, although with the internet, we can all enjoy the various Sunkist logos that have blessed our planet in perpetuity.

Plus, Pepsi changes their logo to some degree about once a decade, with the next one on the horizon in 2009.

In any case, I told my mom she did a good job on the Sunkist logo, and she just kinda stared at me for awhile. They love when I come to visit!

Catherine Hardwicke, in the middle of the European press tour for Twilight, got fired from directing the next movie in the franchise, although a quick press release after it leaked claims it’s a mutual decision.

I didn’t see it, as you may remember, but I’d challenge anyone to try and make a decent movie from that book without making massive changes to the storyline.

Of course, this would only anger the fans of the books, who are the only ones who saw it, anyway.

Tough situation either way – maybe it’s time to get rid of all the Twilight books finally?

Keanu Reeves is ready, willing and able for Bill and Ted 3.

“Maybe we could do it with them both grown up — they haven’t saved the world and they’re just living their lives as middle-aged men. That sounds quite funny.”

I don’t know how he came up with that story, but I’m in. Please make this next week, and have it out in time for Christmas.

By the way, if I’m spending time watching a Pacers-Celtics game, that pretty much means I’m back in bed with the NBA.

She’s been my favorite since like when I saw this picture 15 minutes ago. I thought she only did sophisticated movies like “Poseidon” – I’m totally into her now.

UPDATE: [...]]]> (I would never go see the Dragonball movie, but if this is what Emmy Rossum is gonna be looking like in it, I’ll have to.

She’s been my favorite since like when I saw this picture 15 minutes ago. I thought she only did sophisticated movies like “Poseidon” – I’m totally into her now.

UPDATE: Wait – she’s only 22? Hasn’t she been a full-grown woman for like 10 years at least?)

I think one of the main things that’d be fun about being famous is pretending you’re making a complete mess out of your fame and fortune, and then watching everyone talk about it.

Take this quote regarding a particular actress.

I’ve cleverly hidden who it is by being clever aboot it.

“Lindsay’s been drinking, doing cocaine and causing all-around mayhem for the past few months.”

Like if that were me, I’d totally play into it, by being even worse than they say, and calling the media out for trying to protect me.

It’d be hilarious if like things were so bad, that my mom had no choice but to write about it in the Christmas letter that goes out to family and friends.

She’s just like, “Screw it – they’re all reading about it anyway; let’s just tell it like it is. Our son causes all-around mayhem – you happy?”

Just what all-around mayhem is, I don’t know, although I do know I’ve definitely caused it before.

I know it’s not, but it sounds like a living, breathing tornado (who may or may not be sentient) follows you around, leaving a path of destruction in your wake.

Hey – that’s a great movie:

My Naughty Tornado
A young boy must figure out why everyone hates him when his best friend, a tornado, begins blowing stuff around whenever he leaves the house.

I can’t get to that until maybe January, but you can be sure that moved right up my to-do list.

Oh, I’ve also determined that my “ha-ha it’s so funny how everyone in Texas has guns” demeanor will probably get me shot within hours of making contact with the Dallas natives next week.

Here it is:

I’ve been reading for about a week now….STOP TAKING COLD SHOWERS! Are you crazy???? :)
(haven’t showed it to your Dad yet…afraid he might think you’ve totally flipped out!

That is, for those of [...]]]> (So glad I didn’t bother to search out that game lasterday…Browns-Steelers, I will watch online tonight.)

Here it is:

I’ve been reading for about a week now….STOP TAKING COLD SHOWERS! Are you crazy???? :)
(haven’t showed it to your Dad yet…afraid he might think you’ve totally flipped out!

That is, for those of you without the skills of deduction, from my mom.

(Yeah, it could’ve been from my dad’s mistress, but we don’t really get along, and I can’t remember the last time she emailed me.)

Cold shower #2 was just taken – here are more things I’ve noticed, and you know how I like things:

1) The mirror in the bathroom doesn’t steam up.
2) You start to dry instantly, and the entire drying process is faster than after a warm shower.
3) This is by no means easy. While it’s somewhat empowering, you want to be done. Beyond the 1-minute “stand there with clenched fists and feel powerful” phase, you get down to business and get finished.
4) You’re not cold when the shower is over. In fact, as soon you turn the water off, you feel this rush of warmth and energy.

Overall, I feel like this is not only good mentally, but it’s saving me a lot of time, due to numbers 1-3 above.

NOTE: My old friend Jordi’s website, The Serious Tip, turned two today – congratulations!

He also was wondering what, if any, sports blogs I read anymore. This is the list, direct from my RSS reader:

Blog Maverick – Mark Cuban’s blog. I don’t know if this even counts as sports – in fact, just now, I moved it over to “Tech/General Blogs”.

(That link goes to his post about why John McCain not knowing about computers is frightening. I completely agree.)

Deadspin – I don’t really “read” it – just skim the headlines in case there’s something interesting, which often there is.

The Big Lead – Only for the links/round-up posts.

True Hoop – As a (somewhat disenchanted) NBA fan, of course. Plus Henry writes about things that aren’t written about elsewhere.

Brian Windhorst’s Beacon Journal Blog – Cavs insight. Brian is also a good guy.

That’s all there is for me anymore. I figure anything significant that happens in sports or on sports blogs, I will catch wind of through those and ESPN DOT COM.

I also check other places now and then just for the hell of it, but most of my regular reading is entertainment/film stuff, and personal blogs of people I know or find interesting.

I looked myself in the eye and realized my “have to start things on Sunday”, while true, was just an excuse, and went ahead with this whole thing today.

The determined method was as such – I would get in the shower, and THEN turn the water on.