I Think I'm Going To Start Taking Lots and Lots of Pictures of My Sweet, Sweet Junk

America, 2014. Lots of people (celebrities, in this case, but we know it happens to others, as well) have had their phones hacked, and naked pictures they took of themselves have surfaced all over the internet. Of course, by a group of small minded idiots, these celebrities are being blamed for taking said photos, instead of the troglodytes who hacked their phones. 

Such is the world we live in. 
I hate a lot of catch-phrases, but one that's starting to very much ring true to me is "victim-blaming". 
Why?
Because there's a hell of a lot of it going on right now. 
It seems to really rear its head when the issues centers around 1950s-type Americana morality. 
In other words, things do with sex and our naughty bits. 
Things like blaming rape victims because they dress slutty. (Something, by the way, I thought went out of vogue back in the '80s). 
Things like telling females, or males, that if they're attractive, and flaunt their attractiveness, they're inviting derisive, harassing attention. 
Things like telling trans people, gays, and bisexuals that they deserve bullying/ harassment because, well, they're being who they fucking are. 
Or, things like telling people whose naked pictures get hacked: "Hey, why dontcha just not take nude photos of yourself?"
Really? 
Why don't you shove your question up your ass, which is obviously where your brain is? 

Also, another observation:
Most people who say things like this, are the kinds of people nobody wants to see naked anyway. Maybe there's a connection. 

Back To My Bloots... blog-roots... anyway.

I'm taking a break from cleaning house, and I felt that I wanted to start blogging again, regularly. Like, prune juice regular! Ultra-regular!
Right? Write.
So, I'm back here.
I'm pretty sure this was the blog spot (swidt???!!!) that started it all for me.
Well, if you don't count live journal. And it's ev 2014. So, I don't.

Does anybody still read this thing?
If so, how the fuck are you?
It's been awhile, eh?

I like this blogging platform better than the other. It's mores accessible, and "user friendly", to me at least.

But, there's a lot to catch up on, sooo:

Since I've last blogged here, Richard Davis moved from Tokyo to Houston to be with me, and we've now been together four-and-a-half years.

We lived in three different places in Houston, and have now lived in Maryland for the past year and four months. We started out in Silver Spring, were there for seven months, then moved to Annapolis, where we've been for almost ten months.
Whew!

My career has switched much more from voicing Anime, to voicing Audiobooks. I also still do commercials, corporate, elearning, etc, but the thrust of my work is in Audiobookland.

That said, I have in the past year voiced a recurring character in Pokemon, and two new titles for Sentai Filmworks.
If you're looking to ever see me in anything from Funi again, don't hold your breath. Relations between myself and them are, most likely, forever fractured. So it goes.

I've also been through a couple of bouts of bad agoraphobia in the past couple of years, but have been mostly rescued from them by going back on my PKU diet. More on that in another blog. Hell, PKU could be a blog unto itself. As could agoraphobia, but let's not give it that much energy, shall we? Right on.

I just recently attended my 87th convention as a Guest, which was NDK 2014. A good time, but a bit marred by mostly all the guests having altitude sickness. Yucky, yucky fatigue!

That's really about it, without just getting into too much trivia and small detailed stuff.

Mainly, I just wanted to start blogging here again, so, yay, here I am!

I'm here, I'm queer, you're over it .


peace

why? tooth

sometimes people are ignorant and repulsive. I guess that's just human nature. argh. I don't really want to blog about pop culture any more. Of course, I say that, and watch I will feel compelled to blog about Fergie or Zac Efron's underwear tomorrow or some such thing. Whatever. Really, I want to convert this more into a general rant box. A place to clear my head, so, don't be too surprised if things start changing a little around here.

I have a tooth issue going on right now. Broken off tooth in the back of my mouth. Hurts. Am on Augmentin and Vicodin for it right now. Might need a root canal. ARGH! Money!

Anyway, no big deal really. Things are generally good, and could get much much better soon.

I need new demos, new things recorded for condotcom, and to bother my agent.

woosh.

xoxo

It's fucking Fall! Yay!

Okay, what can I say? Things are DRY right now in the way of Voiceover. September was an insanely busy month and October was alright, but wow, November is currently not being good to your humble bloggist. Boo and suck and hiss.

I did just finish up a production of The Rocky Horror Show and am about to audition for a production of RENT, so I will keep you, dear Blog-followers, updated on that.


xoxo,
Gossip Gir... um, I mean, Patton

General Catch-Up... and a Rant About Fruit Flies and Wanna Bis

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here, and I suppose I owe a bit of an apology for my blogger slackdom. So, apologies, all around.

There's been a lot going on. I've been the voice of a new ad campaign, booking lots of anime hours, going through some weird shit with trying to figure out exactly what's happened to the MOST IRRESPONSIBLE Anime Distribution Company in the world(!) ( not FUNimation), and rehearsing The Rocky Horror Show, while also maintaining hours at The Hobby Center Box Office, especially with new seasons going on sale, not to mention individual ticket sales for Grease and Mary Poppins causing mild panic. That, along with my eLearning software gig and trying to keep up my spiritual practices has left me littlo-to no time for blogging.

But there have been some things on my mind, you can be sure.

The main thing that's really been grinding my gears, sticking in my craw, and any other clever little expression you can think of for "getting on ones nerves" is the preponderance of the Fruit Fly, or Fruit Bat, as they have been deemed by New Millennial Pop Culture.
For those of you not familiar with the moniker, a Fruit Fly is a "straight" dude who dresses and acts very femmish, or extremely metrosexual, and loves to flirt and hang around with gay dudes so that he himself can get play from girls who fawn over gay dudes themselves, OR they just want the attention of gay guys because they feel it gives them some kind of arty cred or some dumb shit like that.
In general, I don't have a huge problem with guys like this. I mean, come on, I'd rather have THEM around than fag-bashing homophobes. But let me tell you something.
DON'T FUCKING FLIRT WITH ME IF YOU'RE STRAIGHT! GOT IT?
In fact, if you're a fruit fly and reading this, and ESPECIALLY if you plan to meet me at a con,
1. Don't proposition me
2. Don't flirt with me
3. Don't act like you want me in your pants or vice versa because you think I can "get you in the biz". I most likely can't, and you can be damn sure that if you fuck with my head, I WON'T!
Just because I'm gay, and you think it's maybe some sort of novelty, that doesn't mean you get to exploit my sexuality or make it the punchline to your every passive/aggressive "open-minded" straight boy joke!

got it?
Good.
Any questions, just leave them in the comments.

I'm pissed now.

Be back later.


xoxo,
Chris

Art vs. Rent

Hello.

Some of you know that I'm currently voicing some eLearning software, and in the most recent case the subject has been Trig. Yes, I'm voicing Trig software. I'm teaching kids Trig. Welcome to the world of VoiceOver. Hey, the whole point is I make it SOUND like I know what I'm talking about, regardless of the fact that I never, myself, advanced past Algebra II.

My director/ engineer for these sessions, Kipp, is a relatively quiet guy, but when he does speak, it's usually entertaining, or at least sparks a flare of interest in my brain. The other day, during one of our rather arduous sessions, in which I believe I had to say "Trigonometric functions" at least twenty times, he came out with a line that was not only completely true, but I thought a good topic for this blog.

In the midst of a bit of tongue-tied lunacy, I stopped a particular take and just sort of huffed a gripe about how I had zero idea what I was talking about at this point. He told me "hey, it still sounds like you do, and that's all that matters", and that was when he gave me the quote that so-well described what we were doing. "Look", he said, "My friend Gene and I have talked about this many times. There's voice over work that is art, and then there's the kind that pays your rent. There's art, and there's rent. This is rent." Totally.

I think it's worth mentioning to anybody interested in Voice Acting, either as a career, or just wanting to know more about it from an outsider's standpoint, I will tell you that you will do MANY gigs to stay afloat that while they may be profitable, may not get your artistic rocks off... and that's okay! God knows we all need to make money. We need to eat, put roofs over our heads, provide for ourselves and our family/ies, and maybe even enjoy some creature comforts. ( and I'm not saying 'getting rich' is out of the question either, for an actor, it's just rare ). But, at the end of the day, we're Artists, Entertainers, and we love to elicit a laugh, a tear, a smile, maybe some shock... an emotion, basically. And it's a bit easy to sometimes get disheartened when sitting in a booth, reading 60-80 pages of Math text. Thing is, I'm grateful for ANY work I get, and I suppose you could say I'm helping kids learn math in at least a SEMI-fun way, but no, I'm not playing the lead in some groundbreaking rock opera, I'm not singing Queen's gretest hits, I'm not getting to play a David Mamet character.
Still, I am thankful. I get paid to use my voice, sometimes in animation, sometimes in Audio Books, sometimes in Commercials...and sometimes in eLearning. And while it's not all great, HIGH ART, it is all a creative use of my voice, and it pays.

And I love it.

Forty Years Ago... In Which Your Humble Bloggist Contemplates Becoming An Ostritch

Forty years ago, before I was born, before most or all of you were born, I would imagine, it was the "Summer of Love" and Woodstock was THE event. An orgy of free love, drug experimentation, peace and rock and fucking roll.

Maybe that's when it all started going wrong.

In the interest of balance, it seems the pendulum always swings back and forth, liberal...conservative...liberal...and back again.

But what the fuck has happened in America lately?
We elect a fairly liberal, black President, who like all Presidents, makes good on some of his promises, and falters on others, and it feels like we're on the verge of Anarchy. I don't know about all of you, but some of the reactions at these town hall meetings scare me just as much as the thought of poorly-run Government Health Care. Morevover, all the people I spent my twenties despising: Rush, Hannity and their ilk, all seem to me now to have SOME valid points, and that REALLY scares the hell out of me. In some ways, I feel like I'm becoming a fiscal conservative while remaining wildly liberal in the social sphere. And so be it if that's the case, but the me of ten years ago would have been sickened by the thought. Maybe the me of ten years ago wasn't really as "open-minded" as I liked to pretend.
Then at other times, say when I'm reading Spike Spencer's ULTRA-nationalistic, very conservative blog about how fuckin' great America is ( and yes, it is ) and how much Europe sucks ( sorry, I don't believe it does ), the mad liberal that I was in the '90s comes out again, and I get all "fuck you and your bloated ultra-Patriotism!".

It is at moments like these that I just want to take a tab of Fuckitol and stick my liberal/conservative/anarchistic/commie/fascist/faggot/hetero/bisexual/black/white/asian/german/indian head in the sand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe, after a few deep breaths and not a little contemplation, what I'll realize is that I, like many people, am just not that easily categorizeable. Maybe I don't fall into nice little niches, nooks and crannies invented by people who need a label for every thought that comes out of every person's head.

So, before I pledge allegiance again, to any flag, I think I need to make a pledge to MYSELF to not be an ostritch, but to proudly walk with my head held high, and my beliefs intact, no matter who they might please or offend.

my favorite line from any musical ever, comes from the show Chess... at the end of the first Act, the Russian Chess Champion is defecting to the US, and he is asked why he is "leaving" Russia.
His response- "I leave NOTHING!" After which, he sings one of the most beautiful songs ever written, called "Anthem"... and my favorite line is the last one sung, and it says this-
"Let man's petty nations tear themselves apart...My land's only borders lie around my heart!"

Amen