Jay Peterson
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Because it amused Abby greatly...

10/29/2021

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Here's the playlist for my Halloween-adjacent trivia games:

Ghost riders in the sky - Johnny Cash
I'm in love with a monster - Fifth Harmony
Sympathy for the Devil - Jane's Addiction (cover)
Welcome to my nightmare - Alice Cooper
Highway to Hell - AC/DC
I put a Spell on You - CCR
Don't fear the Reaper - Blue Oyster Cult
This is Halloween - Danny Elfman
Dream Warriors - Riverdale cast (cover)
Werewolves of London - Warren Zevon
Thriller - Michael Jackson
The Devil Went Down To Georgia - Charlie Daniels
Addams Groove - Hammer
Maneater - Hall & Oates
Feed my Frankenstein - Alice Cooper
Season of the Witch - Donovan
Monster Mash - Bobby "Boris" Pickett
Flip City - Glenn Frey (from Ghostbusters 2)
Jump in the Line - Harry Belafonte
Nature Trail to Hell - Weird Al Yankovic
Hungry like the Wolf - Duran Duran
Evil Woman - Electric Light Orchestra
Somebody's Watching Me - Rockwell
Ghostbusters - Ray Parker Jr
Mysterious Ways - U2
Skullcrusher Mountain - Jonathan Coulton
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I couldn't be a normal actor if I tried

10/26/2021

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So it makes sense that I wouldn't have normal influences.
The one on my mind at the moment is a guy named Ted White. You probably would have to look him up. He was doubling for John Wayne in the early 50's and had a long career afterwards.
At one point, Ted agreed to play Jason in one of the Friday the 13th sequels. He wasn't fond of the series, but needed the money.
The gig workers are starting to nod, while the 9-to-5'ers are a bit confused.
Yes, after 30 years in the business, he took a gig because he needed the money.
It happens to all of us. Sometimes we take roles we're not very excited about. Sometimes we take ones that are uncomfortable or even dangerous.
Anyways, Ted was a bit method. He refused to talk to anyone else in the cast, figuring he wanted to keep them scared of Jason.
But not being social didn't mean he didn't care.
As it turned out, Ted was not happy with the way his castmates were treated.
It came to a head one night when Jason's victim du jur was left on a raft in a lake. In December. Naked. And because nighttime and water are both complications, the crew was taking their sweet time setting up. To the point where the actor was visibly crying from the cold.
Ted went to the director and demanded they bring the actor back in to warm her up. The director balked.
Ted told the director to warm her up or he could find himself a new Jason.
That story didn't hit me as hard as it should have until after I'd done uncomfortable gigs because the bills were waiting for me. But think about it.
The man was in his late fifties.
He took the gig because he needed the cash.
He never so much as talked to the other actor.
And he still played the only card he had and risked his meal ticket for her sake.
The director backed off and the actor was brought in and warmed up.
Just in time, as she wound up being treated for hypothermia.
I'm more than a little angry that I work in a field where pointing out a safety hazard still puts someone at risk of losing their job and not being hired again.
But if, gods forbid, that remains the case?
And if, gods again forbid, I'm still taking what gigs I can because I need the cash in twenty-odd years?
Then I hope I have the courage to keep my integrity when it counts.
After all, Ted did.
Happy Halloween season, folks.
Take care of yourselves out there.
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Ten years ago I had something to say about Just Blanks

10/23/2021

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Now I got something to say about just props.
Insisting on referring to a weapon of any kind as a prop instead of just calling it a weapon is a bit of disingenuous negligence that contributes to hazards like what happened Thursday.
With the rare exceptions of "money," "drugs," and "food," no other object that goes through the props department undergoes anything approaching this treatment.
They're. Still. Weapons.
We can and do use them in ways that make sure our cast and crew all go home safely at the end of the day.
Doesn't change the fact that. they're. still. weapons.
And let's be honest, it's done to soothe ruffled feathers. Weapons are scary. Props are safe.
Well, I hate to be the buzzkill, but there's already a word for something that looks like a weapon and handles like a weapon but isn't a weapon.
That word is "toy."
And now we're surprised that people treated weapons like toys and tragedy ensued.
If you work with weapons and insist on calling them props instead of weapons because honesty gives you the willies?
Then you're part of the problem and you need to either unfuck your head or leave the business.
Preferably before your hangups get someone else hurt.
If you're beholden to a person or institution who insists on calling them props instead of weapons?
Then you're beholden to a chickenshit, still part of the problem, and still have a binary solution set to choose from as described above.
If you're really that bent out of shape about weapons you shouldn't be working on projects that use them in the first place.
I should have screamed this from the rooftops the first time I encountered this asinine case of mental gymnastics: Eight fucking years ago.
At least I'm fucking saying it now. A day late and a dollar short.
Take care of yourselves out there.
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Yes, I know about the ND on the set of Rust.

10/22/2021

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I know no details beyond what's been reported in the press.
At the moment I'm mostly pissed that my industry has kept up the record of a death a decade, every decade, since at least the 80's. Probably before that, but productions had better control of word getting off set before then.
Not to mention the gods know how many narrowly missed incidents that nobody publicly knows about over the years.
I'm not going to be looking into the Rust shooting further.
I backed off from doing most gunwork professionally in 2018, then stopped entirely when the pandemic lockdowns hit last year. Exceptions are very few and far between.
Now's usually the time when a bunch of folk from gun culture start mounting high horses and talking about how Hollywood needs to get itself educated.
Well, first off, Hollywood averages an negligent shooting death once a decade. And that's if you include the Thayer case. The rest of America manages about 400 negligent shooting deaths a year.
So fuck that attitude if that's what you came with.
(Not that you should be getting complacent, Hollywood. Look at the population of the country vs the number of on-set professionals and do the math. Don't forget to account for a decade vs a year.)
Secondly?
I tried.
I spent most of my 30's doing my best at exactly that.
Talked with a lot of people.
Trained a lot of people.
Worked with a lot of people.
Accomplished a lot.
Met some incredible friends along the way.
Some of whom are still my ride or dies.
Unfortunately, I also ran into several gaggles of culty motherfuckers that were all too happy to enjoy what I could do, but had nothing but contempt for who I was.
Took me almost a decade before I could cut 'em loose.
And it hurt me a lot more than it hurt them.
(Screwed what little chance I had of working in intimacy coordination on my way out, despite the fact that I think I'd be pretty good at it, but that's another story.)
Between acting and writing, I have enough of an uphill run. I don't need more.
So if you want to give it a go, gunbunny?
Knock yourself out.
There's all the poverty and ostracism you can eat out there.
Have fun bringing the good news to the great unwashed.
Given that any actor whose name you've actually heard of has exponentially more training in their craft under their belt than you have range and field time under yours; I'm sure they'll be happy to listen to your war stories while paying you by the hour.
Don't forget the church analogies or the innuendo. Those always go over great with people trying to learn.
I look forward to hear of your success.
Go in peace.
*sigh*
Hopefully in the morning I won't miss the culty motherfuckers anymore.
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So, the $600 monitoring by the IRS.

10/14/2021

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First off, don't panic. The first hit on googling it is a factcheck by USA today, which claims that such a thing is at the moment a proposal by the treasury department. Making it law would require congress. Which, in case you haven't noticed, is in a bit of a contentious mood at the moment.
So now that we've been calmed, let's ask ourselves: why would the treasury want to implement this?
I'm gonna TRY not to go all Swanson on you here.
Frankly, the last thing I need to do is encourage the fucking Libertarians any more than I already do.
But the bottom line is that governments do need a certain amount of funding in order to function. They don't produce anything as such, so every dollar a government confiscates, I mean earns, has to be collected from somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, government does provide services. The extent to which services it should do is yet another argument.
("Taxation is theft!" "Shut the fuck up. You're scaring the Commies.")
SO lately, the gov's been doing a lot and wants to do more. And borrowing has gotten extensive enough to be noticed.
Tax the rich?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Moral issues (and yet another argument) aside, the IRS has already pointed out that they don't have the resources to really try even if they had the legal power to do so. More and better lawyers and accountants will go work for the superrich rather than the government. Every law that does get passed gets by bypassed by people on the payroll smarter than those who wrote it (and don't have to pass a bipartisan committee to make it happen.)
And the congresscritters will cheerfully say they want to, but they know damn well that any law they make that affects a 1%er their constituents want to soak and/or eat will also affect a 1%er that donated heavily to their campaign.
Sometimes, they're even different people.
So IRS auditing power has been focused on relatively small fish for some time now. 1099 workers and people with big shifts in income year-to-year have been reliable targets for audits, but three new categories have come up in recent years.
The first is cryptocurrency.
Also an argument I'm not going to take on here. It's out there, it's new, the taxman wants a piece of it, full stop.
The second is boomer pensions.
10,000 Baby Boomers hit retirement age every single day.
About one in four of them have a private pension, held by an employer, union, or other entity.
Net worth of the Baby Boomers is somewhere around $35 Trillion.
Unlike social security, which is a cash cow the feds milked until only air came out of the tit years ago, that pension money's still out there. And the Feds getting their greasy mitts on it for their own ends, I mean equitable redistribution, is only a new law or two away.
The third is online transactions.
Technically, reporting all income included garage sales. The taxman just didn't have the time or energy to track you down for the weekend you spent making fifty bucks getting rid of your crap months ago.
But that was before ebay and etsy and poshmark and their ilk let anyone set up a stall 24/7.
Or the gig economy made exponential numbers of 1099 users possible.
Not to mention the online whip-rounds of crowdfunding that have saved many an impoverished one from falling even harder. The taxman wants his share of that as well.
What all of these have in common is that the IRS has to see it before it can audit it.
Crpyto may be hidden, but sooner or later it needs to either be used for a good or service or converted into a physical currency, either of which requires a financial service.
Pensions have to use those services as well, whether they use paper checks or direct deposit.
And there's only a handful of payment processors on either end electronically.
$600 is a monthly rent if you live way out in the sticks. That much going through annually makes a fish big enough to track.
Hence, making the financial service providers (of which there are relatively few) report them all.
So now the IRS can cast their nets into a much bigger part of the sea.
Not to catch the big fish.
But all the legal catches that thought they were too small to notice.
Again, only a proposal. No law behind it at all.
For now.
Take care of yourselves out there.
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Been about a month since the feds eliminated PUA and affiliated programs.

10/3/2021

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It's been three months since certain states led by assholes decided to end it prematurely in their jurisdictions.
(Talking about you, Kemp, you feckless dipshit.)
And the "Nobody wants to work (for the bullshit pay and treatment you're offering)" phenomenon shows no signs of letting up.
I see it every night I drive home from a gig.
I can tell on every intersection which drive-thru places are treating and paying their people OK.
They're the ones that are still open and serving after 9PM on weeknights, and have the line in their drive-through lane to prove it.
It's like watching capitalism shake off the cronyism and rebalance.
And I find it glorious.
I honestly don't care if a huge swath of the restaurant industry financially bleeds out and dies. The survivors will be the ones with the capacity and willingness to pay and treat their people right. If the end result means I have two choices of drive-throughs at a given intersection instead of five? And a line at each one? Boo fucking hoo. Barely qualifies as a first world problem. And if some entrepreneur sees the demand at the location and decides to open up a competitor, they can either pay and treat their people right or they can go down in shame themselves.
Folks, I'm one of the most ardent capitalists some of you will ever deign to read. If I'm saying this now? It's a pretty big step.
Now, I can't watch the theater or academia go through the same viciously harrowing process on my evening drive. But that's what Twitter is for.
Take care of yourselves out there.
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So, it's been a whole month since the last of the 82nd flew out of Kabul.

10/1/2021

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We can repeal the Patriot act now, right?
We can disband the TSA now, right?
After all, we... finished the war. We don't need fifty thousand federal agents easier to recruit and train than managers of Wendy's, right?
We can dissolve that surveillance state now that the war's over, right?
After all, they were all emergency powers and the emergency's gone, right?
Come on, Dems, you're in charge. You're too ethical to need the ability to spy and drone-assassinate at leisure, right?
You definitely don't want all of that power lying around when the Republicans are in charge again, right?
Right?
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    Jay Peterson

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