It seems a little less than nice on my part to entitle this post “Like flies” but I always try to find the humor in death I think it is like a defense mechanism… but wow… two children of very famous people/actors have committed suicide recently. This has always been a subject that is very close and personal to me because I have battled with depression most of the adult life (despite having a wonderful childhood).

Many years ago now I had to take doctor prescribed medication to fight my acne and this stuff had some serious side effects - the full list of which I will not go into but the most serious of which was the potential for severe depression perhaps resulting in death - or however they phrased it. Anyway after I had been taking it for a while - perhaps after I had completed my treatment I don’t really remember but I found out that supposedly actor Jonathan Brandis had been taking the same stuff and it had probably led to his death by suicide.

He was only a year of two older than me and because of the way movies work he was the same age as me whenever I saw him in a new movie. I liked him a lot and he showed up in a lot of the stuff I watched anyway, it was very sad when I found out what had happened and I felt depressed then because I just always felt that… if only I could have talked to him, maybe I could have helped. I do not know what it is like to be a celebrity - even with thousands of fans… did he still feel alone? Maybe if he had had someone to talk to. (Not that I don’t think that he did I am sure he was surrounded by a loving family)

Anyway I am reminded of that feeling recently, Both Andrew Koenig (son of Star Trek actor Walter Koenig) and Brian Blosil (son of Marie Osmond) both committed suicide recently and whilst I may not have known anything about Brian Blosil - I did know a little about Andrew Koenig. Death - Particularly Death by suicide (a preventable death) is always sad.

The one “funny” thing I find in this recent news is that Andrew Koenig played “The Joker” in probably the best Batman fan film currently out there; Batman: Dead End. Both Heath Ledger and Andrew Koenig who both played the Joker, both died prematurely.

Ok I think I am at the end of my maudlin little rant. All of this is very sad and my thoughts are with the families of the deceased. sigh.

Not much but some.

I have tried several times to get in touch with Nic Sveen about the couple of quick re-shoots I want to try and do with him but I am having trouble getting ahold of him… I am not giving up, I am going to try again in a few minutes in fact - but I would feel a lot better if i had gotten that stuff out of the way…

Anyway… I got a hold of Lizzie Webster and she is up for getting together and re-doing the cast commentary, so that is exciting… I just need to get a hold of NIC.

About the only real actual progress I have made since my last post is that I have worked on the Menu backgrounds and some transitions and lay outs and stuff… It isn’t finished by a long shot but it is something.

Sigh… February is almost over already yikes. Less then 6 months to go!

Ok so things here as per usual have been busy but I have managed to find the time to rough up some cover designs for the final Roadkill DVD.

The exact list of extras isn’t set, I have barely started work on any of them but the final product shouldn’t be too different from that seen here. Click on each one to bring up a larger image and drop me an e-mail and let me know what you think, which one do you like the most and why, or just anything that you like or dislike about any of them.

Ok Back to grind stone…

Ok so things didn’t go exactly as planned with the Headcast. I don’t really know what to say about it.

It was hard for me being under the Alginate and plaster and not being able to help. My wife and our friend Will both did a great job of helping me, they did everything that they were supposed to but ultimately it isn’t something that they have done before (not that I have either) and this isn’t what they want to do - not like I do. I wish that there was someone else here locally that had some experience doing it.

My friend Scott lives too far away and he is the only person I know who has done it before. We are discussing doing it again but we will have to see.

I guess I should talk about the headcast itself… there are parts of it that aren’t too bad but the there are
parts that are quite frankly horrendous. It looks like a deformed bald gimp version of me. Malformed. The jacket mother mold leaked like a sieve and in an effort to stop the leaks I pushed clay along the seem and ended up somehow pushing in one of the ears, I didn’t have any superglue so I couldn’t secure the Alginate to the jacket and it ended up slipping here and there, the Ultracal didn’t mix right at (user error?) and went from water to solid while I was patching leaks. sigh. In short about everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

My head is killing me and I need to get to sleep. I am going to go and brush my teeth in a minute but it wont wash the bitter taste of defeat out.