That's Racin!

Recently Marshall told me I was due for a NASCAR post. I have a long history with NASCAR. I grew up in beautiful Charlotte, NC, the home of the new NASCAR explosion, Bank of America, and one-time resident and original Charlotte Hornet Muggsy Bogues. When I was a child, every Sunday my dad would tape the NASCAR race that would run for 4 to 5 hours while he worked in the yard and drank unsweetened ice tea (a blasphemy in the South, but my parents are from Texas, where they don't necessarily sweeten it - maybe it's somehow "bigger" that way since Texans love big stuff). I remember going to the track when I was a kid and seeing large men exist on the concrete bleachers (they don't sit, they just exist there) and toss discarded Bojangles' chicken bones down to the lower bleachers. You just dodged them, it was normal (and necessary - you don't want to get hit with a chewing-tobacco-saliva soaked cajun spiced bone - although that sounds like it could be a new flavor...). I think my dad likes NASCAR the same way I like skateboarding. I like going to races with him. I've seen him get giddy and walk fast ahead of us at the race, totally caught up in the action, the same way I will sit for an hour or more and watch skateboarders do flatland tricks at Union Square in New York. (And now I'm thinking about the skate videos I saw Union Square in while I was growing up. Man, I love skateboarding.)

NASCAR came full circle for me a couple years ago. I used my top 25 university degree as an entrance into the world of film as a Production Assistant in Charlotte (and you don't have to have any sort of degree to do a Production Assistant's job - you just have to be smart enough to, say, beat a rock in chess. No, checkers. Even easier). Three and a half years of getting water for Dale Jr., holding a light meter in front of Kurt Busch, and being a stand in for Michael Waltrip and Sterlin Marlin (and one time I got to drive Lance Armstrong to the airport, and I also got to be in a Petey Pablo video this other time!!! Total gangsta!!). All in all, it was almost four years in the trenches of film and TV commercials mostly involving NASCAR, and although sometimes some of it feels like time wasted, I had a lot of cool experiences. I worked with some big time directors and cinematographers, learned about a film set, and had some good times with friends (and I was in a PETEY PABLO video!!! PETEY PABLO!!! It was shown on the GRAMMY'S!!! GOODNESS SAKES!!). Those years in production also gave me my first shots at some TV exposure. Like my Oscar winning role in the 2005 UPS NASCAR commercials as "Pit Crew Guy With Moustache". (Note: I lost the Oscar to Clooney for Syriana. Hack. Oh, and, the moustache is real.)




















Really, that picture brings me more full circle than I thought. All my life growing up my dad had a full moustache and was into NASCAR. And in this picture I totally embody that - very full stache and very much NASCAR. Like father like son. Now I just need a picture of my dad on a skateboard with a Sufjan shirt on.

Piggybacking on my rave success as Pit Crew Swashbuckler Guy, this week I have my first TV job in New York as talent. Thursday I will shoot an episode of Date Night on AMC as a "Dater". That's right ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a dating show. But this one's different, it's more talking about movies and commenting on them with a date, than hot tubbing and salsa dancing in a pre-make out dance of the singles. Whew. The show airs Monday April 24th at 8PM EST. Oh, and the movie we'll be watching - Rambo: First Blood. That is way tough. I should've kept that moustache.