I’ve never been one to shy away from my past. It’s a part of me and the past has shaped who I’ve become today (which may or may not be a resounding vote for my past). While transferring some backups, I came across four items that have never before been available for wide viewing or listening. Since I’m all for a good laugh, I give you four things I’ve done you very likely have never seen or heard.
1. NHK: Japan interview in “Advertising Revolution” (2006)
Yes, for about 15 seconds I was a star in Japan. Okay, not really. But I along with the crew from Your Media Coverage were chosen to be in an NHK: Japan documentary on new media and advertising. Roughly translated, I believe the documentary name was “Advertising Revolution”. A film crew from Tokyo came out to California and filmed us shooting “Digging for Oil” for Toyota and Current TV. Current TV wasn’t too happy about it (they weren’t asked by NHK, the producer simply liked our work and contacted us directly). NHK was a joy to work with (the shoot us shooting two commercials but only one made it into the final product) and after a lot of years, I’ve snipped the clip from the 45 minute long documentary as proof it really happened (I was starting to doubt myself).
It’s for some reason inherently cool to be dubbed into Japanese. Google is also in that documentary (apparently they do some cutting edge stuff…)
2. KFC commercial - “The Therapy Session” (2003)
For the life of me I can’t recall the names of everyone involved in this, but this was a spec ad for a KFC contest of some type (Super Bowl I think) that I was in circa 2003. I only have a low quality version, and I don’t think it ever saw the light of day outside of the people who were in it. The people I’ve shown this to laugh…a lot. Mostly at me.
3. Sounds of Telegin (2000)
Way back in my days at Seattle University, I was Telegin in a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. For this production, I was tasked with the job of learning to play the mandolin (well, at least in a passable way, which I accomplished with zeal). I was awesome, so awesome that for the cast wrap party I made everyone a CD of just the most awesome Telegin mandolin music the world had ever seen.
We played this at the cast party, which happened to be in a Russian restaurant with ironically a mandolin on the wall. Again, everyone laughed which was a good thing, because if those were tears of pain I may have taken it personally. But probably not.
If you really like it, you’re in luck: I give you for this limited time, the entire set of MP3’s for download free for personal use. Just spread the word of my awesome skills. [ Download ]
4. Short film - “Pickup” (2002-ish)
I am ever so briefly in this short film by David Miller (can you see me sweep the main characters friend away to dance?), which is based on the comic by Mary Fleener & Pat Moriarity. You can also buy the film on DVD over at IndieFilm.
A lesson to be learned
Embrace the crazy things you’ve done: they may just be more interesting than you think. At the very least, laugh. Life if to short not to at least once say “I can’t believe I did that!”