Set Up The Tivos!

For those of you looking to watch something on TV and can get the Encore cable network, check your local listings for the film Boiler Room. TV Guide gives first time director Ben Younger 4 out of 5 stars for this one. Keep an eye out for me as a young trainee trying to learn the ropes of buying and selling at the fictional brokerage firm of J.T. Marlin. Things get nasty.

Also, check around for Two If By Sea as well. It may be On Demand on Showtime or one of those crazy networks. I play Yaphet Kotto's partner FBI Agent Burke.

Fourth of July EXTRA!!

I know many of you have been waiting a long time to meet my father. Thanks to today's technology and my talented, blue-grass playin' cousin Johnny Bird (author of Mark Twain And Metaphor). Here's my Dad giving his thoughts on fishing. That's Johnny's voice asking him the questions. Also, notice his t-shirt says "Ross Farm Museum Nova Scotia" I bought that for him while shooting "Two If By Sea" in Canada. See, my dad's a farmer, his name's Ross, who knew they had a Farm Museum. Anyway, I think he likes the shirt, he liked it enough to fish in it.



And here, he's caught a FREAKIN' SHARK! Well, it's a baby shark, but IT'S A FREAKIN' SHARK!!

Fireworks.

When I was a kid in North Carolina, we would sometimes drive just beyond the theme park Carowinds and into South Carolina to buy fireworks. There was the time my brother's friend "Cooter" bought "five hunnerd dollars worth of fireworks" and had them all in a brown paper bag. He wanted to shoot some of those spinning Jumping Jacks first, so he lit a batch and they started flying in all sorts of directions. Unfortunately, one of the main directions they headed, was straight into the bag they came from. "Five hunnerd dollars worth of fireworks."

Then there was the time myself and my best friend Eric bought some bottle rockets and made two launchers out of 3 feet of 1/2" copper pipe and a plastic funnel on the end to prevent blast-back. We'd each get at opposite ends of a deserted street and shoot at each other. Really good fun. We tried an alternate version of that where we'd drive down dark streets, lean out the window and shoot them in front of our moving car. That was pretty awesome too... until the cops pulled us over and found our fireworks and launchers. Thankfully they only took the fireworks and let us go with a warning.

My daughter has so much to look forward to.

Happy 4th of July.