A future in Jeopardy

So, as I may have told some or all of you, I've been called to be a contestant on an upcoming episode of Jeopardy!, and my brainpower and time since then has been pretty much all taken up with trying to fill every spare nook and cranny of my brain's synapses with quiz show trivia.

(If you knew how much of it was already composed purely of quiz show trivia beforehand, this should impress and disturb you.)

Apologies to everyone to whom I promised regular updates about the voiceover and performance world, but it's rare that you get the chance to do a half-hour performance that might net you well over $10,000. (Well, rare for me. I'm sure Jennifer Hale is used to it.)

A quick update on what my life has been like: I have obsessively scoured Wikipedia and created complete sets of flashcards on the following topics:

US Presidents, Vice Presidents, losers in presidential elections
The 50 US states, their capitals, their borders and their nicknames
Canada -- provinces, capitals and recent PMs
A list of significant Popes
The British monarchy
Major American wars -- leaders and battles
Seas of the world

Things I have not yet covered but intend to:

Classical musicians of the past 300 years
Popular musicians of the past 70 years (Billboard's #1 hits)
Oscar winners, Best Actor and Best Picture
English-language poets and novelists of the past 300 years
The dreaded opera category
Potent Potables (cocktail recipes)
Mountain ranges and tallest mountains of the world
Rivers and lakes of the world
Archipelagoes and islands of the world
Waterfalls
Nobel Prize winners and their biographies
The periodic table of elements
Major Linnaean categories of living organisms

This is based on research of what categories come up more often in Jeopardy than others, as well as some self-analysis of what I could stand to know more about. I've also been practicing the game theory of Final Jeopardy wagering and standing in front of a monitor playing YouTube videos of Jeopardy games clicking a pen like it's a buzzer.

This has not been good for my health or my relationships, but hopefully it will be all worth it to come within a hairsbreadth of winning, blow the Final Jeopardy question and come home humiliated with $1,000 and a renewed incentive to stop wasting time on Wikipedia and watching game shows and focus on my voiceover career instead.

In the meantime, here's a video from 2012 of me voicing a promo for sous-vide cooking:

Erfworld updates

Listen to me wax poetic in Erfworld update #18:

http://www.erfworld.com/2013/10/4786/

And hear me do my best impression of beloved character actor Ted Levine in Erfworld update #19:

http://www.erfworld.com/2013/10/epilogue-19-caesar-and-bill/

More Erfworld: The plot thickens

I am just as curious to find out who the lady with the hair curlers is as everyone else:

http://www.erfworld.com/2013/10/epilogue-15-%E2%80%93-parson-and-the-great-minds-2/

I may post something serious about the ups and downs of being a non-white person trying to break into showbiz later on (probably not, it's not actually a very fun or interesting topic) but for now let's just say I play this song in my head any time someone talks about Asians being a "model minority":

Audition videos!

So I'm going to start putting up vids of my auditions, performances and so on as much as I can, both for shameless self-promotion purposes and in order to hold myself accountable -- "It was just an audition, no one will ever see it after today" is the lazy actor's go-to excuse for not bringing their A-game.

It looks likely that I didn't get cast for the role since I haven't heard back yet, but here's some video auditions I did at home, filmed on my wife's iPhone -- sorry, but they wanted the audition turned around within a single evening. It's for an upcoming film THE EXURBS, which looks like an awesome film that you should check out whether or not I'm in it:

Update: The Sparx City Hop, the Monologue Battle, and "Handle With Care" at Actors' Summit

I had an amazing time this weekend as a tour guide for the Sparx City Hop in Cleveland. It feels like it's been ages since I made a living sitting in a rumbling trolley bus spouting off into a mic about local landmarks to a bunch of tourists, but it's amazing how it all came rushing back.

DC is easier to tell stories about than Cleveland -- if nothing else when you're in a traffic jam you can fall back on American history in general and tell stories about various presidents and whatnot -- but I really did learn how much there was to know that I didn't know about Cleveland's history preparing for this event, including how much of Cleveland's storied history has been determined by massive rioting. (If you want to know the history of Cleveland's East Side vs. West Side rivalry, check out the story of the Battle of the Bridge.)

I had a lot of fun hanging out with native Clevelanders and visitors to our fair city swapping stories, and I definitely recommend the Sparx City Hop for anyone in Cleveland next year. The Downtown Alliance pays to have touring hop-on-hop-off trolleys completely for free -- which is a better deal than you'll find in DC -- and the only downside of my being a tour guide this year was I didn't have much time to ride myself and take in all the art exhibits, musical performances and cheap beer around that day.

In further news, I'm going to be performing once again at the Epic Lounge at the monthly Monologue Battle. Major props to my friend Cristal Christian for continuing to work hard putting on this event every month. I won the first time I went and have had to yield to the increased competition since then -- but I'm hoping to step up my game this month and reclaim my crown.

Thursday night September 26 at 6:00 pm at 17322 Harvard Ave. in Cleveland. Hope to see you all there!

And finally, more details to come as the event approaches, but I'm excited to announce that I've been cast in the lead role in an upcoming production at Actors' Summit, a romantic comedy entitled HANDLE WITH CARE. (I get to be the comic third wheel in the "meet cute", just like John Candy in Splash.) The show doesn't go up until the spring, so watch this space for more info.

Thanks and much love to all my friends and supporters, and hope to see you at a show soon.

Another Erfworld update

My British accent gets another workout in this one: Maggie and the Great Minds