Vince Guest Stars in “Monk”

Vincent VentrescaYou’ll want to make sure you’re home this Friday night because Vincent Ventresca will be guest starring in a brand new episode of Monk this coming Friday, August 10, at 9:00 p.m./8:00 p.m. central on USA.  As usual, be sure to check your local listings for the time and channel in your area.

The name of the episode is entitled “Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees.”  In it Vince plays the role of Rob Sherman.

Logline:  Monk tries to prove a sports agent is guilty of murder while helping Natalie’s teenage daughter, Julie, with her love life.

You can catch a brief glimpse of Vince in this clip from the upcoming episode.

Mike on “American Body Shop” Tonight

I meant to get this blog out a few days ago to give everyone enough of a heads up, but life has been insanely busy lately and, yeah, I’m behind on my blogging.  I apologize to those of you on digest who won’t see this until tomorrow.

Anyhoo, Mike McCafferty has a guest role tonight on Comedy Central’s new show American Body Shop, which is scheduled to air at 10:30 p.m. Pacific/9:30 p.m. Central.  Be sure to check your local listings for the time and channel in your area. 

Originally, Mike had tried out for a series regular role on the show, but it turned into a guest role instead.  You can read all about the highs and lows of the audition process for this show from the man himself in this post from his MySpace blog

He may not have landed a series regular role, but he did get his own action figure.  This doll (oops…I mean action figure) cracks me up.  Check out the following picture. 

American Body Shop Action Figure

You can get a sneak peak of Mike in his role as Mansfield in the trailer entitled Peak Under the Hood on the American Body Shop home page

In related news, the story of how Sam Greene, the show’s creator, sold his show idea to Comedy Central is a fascinating one.  It’s a story of how sheer tenacity is often needed to make it in Hollywood. 

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Greene, who had spent 20 years writing spec material for film and TV but never sold a project…decided to shoot his own pilot, stick it in an envelope and mail it directly to the network powers-that-be.”  He was ready to give up when one day he got a call telling him “that Comedy Central wanted to develop his project.”  You can read the rest of his story at the Hollywood Reporter website.

In another somewhat related story, it would be easy to assume that all working network writers in Hollywood would automatically be members of the WGA (Writers Guild of America) with all the rights and protection such a membership afforded them, right?  Wrong.  Writers on several Comedy Central shows, which includes American Body Shop, have only recently reached an agreement with the network for WGA contracts.  You can read more about this at Variety.com

Paul Gets a Role as a Series Regular

From the I-Maniacs Fan Club come this exciting news about Paul Ben-Victor:

I just heard from Paul Ben Victor, and he wanted to make sure that all his fans know that he will be in the new HBO show “John From Cincinnnati” that will be premiering this Sunday after The Sopranos.  Paul joined the show in the 3rd episode and will become a regular.  Woo hoo!  He says that it is quite different but very entertaining.

Also, he is going to start a My Space Page as well so he can keep everyone in touch.  He will send me the link when he gets it started, and I will put that information in a future newsletter.

Thanks go to Laura for sharing the info that Paul’s character is named Palaka and that the episode that Paul first appears in is scheduled for this Sunday, June 24.  You’ll want to check the show’s schedule for the time in your area by going to the Official John from Cincinnati Website and clicking on “Full Schedule.”  Also, while you’re perusing the schedule, you might want to check for the days and times of Making John from Cincinnati.  I’m a total sucker for those behind-the-scenes shows. 

Courtesy of Buzzine.com, here are a couple of pictures of Paul in his role of Palaka in John from Cincinnati

Mr. Sprinkles and Eberts

Hello team,

Sadly, L33t Haxxors 4 did not win the final contest on Acceptable TV because, well, we got hacked.

The winner, a good friend of mine who is also the creator of the wildly popular “Chad Vader” series, posted on his site that his show was up for voting. Ambitious readers, noting that voting was unlimited, took that to heart and set up autoclicking programs to rig the game. We tried to fight it with our own ballot stuffing but in the last hours of voting, we lost by 2%. Ugh.

I mention L33t here because as writer and co-director of the past 3 episodes I’ve definitely started to mold the duo of Overlord and Razorwire to resemble Fawkes and Hobbes, respectively. I think they’re really starting to hit their stride and hopefully we’ll shoot a few more of these. Take another look and see if you can spot the similarities.

Also, check out the last three episodes of Mr. Sprinkles. I did the voice of Agent Pedone, who works for Homeland Security. I was surprised that the animation looked a lot like Eberts! I hadn’t even thought about that until I saw the first episode and then it hit me that this could be Eberts, post 9/11. Admittedly, a harsher, no nonsense version, but hey, it’s been quite a few years since we’ve seen him so who knows?

As far as the I-Man, well, you know the story thus far. I’d love to get the cast together for a little I-man short in the vein of the Star Trek online series that use Trek talent. It’d be a non-profit fan film, maybe something to jump start the whole process of a feature. I dunno, if you all support this, maybe you should post comments and let me know.

Having said that, I support Amanda’s quest to bring us all back to the big screen some how. She’s tireless and fearless, both of which are crucial in the battle against Hollywood. I know she’ll succeed someday, when is the million dollar question.

Thanks,

Mike

“On The Lot” Announces Their 50 Semi-Finalists

Back in December I blogged about the upcoming reality show On The Lot.  Now after months of waiting, it’s hard to believe the show begins airing next week on Fox

Out of 12,000 videos that were submitted to the show, only 50 made it to the semi-finals.  Wow.  Talk about tough competition.  So today, as I was scanning the list of semi-finalists’ names for the first time, I was thrilled to see that one name in particular had made it through:  Karla Jean Davis.

Karla is a very talented 25-year old tape operator from Altanta, Georgia.  I’ve only had time to watch a very small portion of all those submissions and, fortunately, Karla’s was one of them.  I was immediately impressed with her talent and right away added her film to my favorites list.  Well, it looks like Steven Spielberg has taken note of her talent also and has chosen her for the top 50.  I’m tickled pink for her!  I should mention that Karla is also a blog mailing list subscriber, so if I seem a bit biased, I admit it.  I totally am.  Way to go, Karla!  Congratulations on making it into the semi-finals.  I’ll be rooting for you! 

Be sure to check out Karla’s film submission.

Golgotha

On The Lot airs its two audition rounds next Tuesday, May 22, at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT and Thursday, May 24, at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT.

50 On the Lot Semi-Finalists Announced

“An Historical Moment”

Don’t blame me for the bad grammar in the title of this post.  I didn’t make it up.  I just borrowed it from the title of Mike McCafferty and Jason Makiaris’ latest Acceptable TV entry called, you guessed it, An Historical Moment.

Once again the guys need our help to get their show on the air.  I’ll let Jason tell you what you need to do in his email below. 

Hey Y’all,

For those keeping score at home, we’ve now had three episodes of L33t Haxxors air on Vh1. Thanks to everyone who has supported us and voted over the past few weeks. If you missed an episode and want to see it, click on one of the links below

L33t Haxxors Episode 1
L33t Haxxors Episode 2
L33t Haxxors Episode 3

This week we are debuting a new series on Acceptable TV entitled An Historical Moment which is hosted by yours truly, and is sure to delight as well as confuse many of you. We love this silly little show, and hope you’ll vote for it. Click the link below to go to the voting page and if you are so inclined, click the “Vote For This Video” link (with the heart next to it) above our video. For some reason, you no longer need to register to vote, so just click away and vote as many times as you like. There aren’t any limits as to how many times you can vote.

Watch “An Historical Moment”

Don’t forget to tune in and see if we air again this Friday night at 10!

Thanks again!

– Jason

So watch and vote for An Historical Moment.  If you think their grammar is wrong, wait until you see what they did with history.

Mike is a Cartoon Character!

I just got home from work and to my delight found the following email from Mike McCafferty in my inbox.  I’m passing it on to all of you.  Hope you can watch! 

Hello all.

So tonight at 10pm on VH1, catch “Acceptable TV”.  It’s a sketch show meets “American Idol” series where the top two sketches each week return for a new episode the following week.

I’ll be voicing the character of Agent Pedone in this week’s animated “Mr. Sprinkles” sketch.  Already on it’s 6th episode, Mr. Sprinkles is a deranged “Cat in the Hat” character who ends up accidentally killing those he tries to entertain during rainy days.  Sentenced to prison, Mr.
Sprinkles learns the harsh truths of an adult world.

Sounds hilarious, huh?!!

If you miss it for any reason, it’ll be available starting tonight on http://acceptable.tv/.  This character will be around probably until the end of the season, but this is my first animated work so I’m a little excited (I’ll spare you the obvious pun).

As a bonus, you may also see “l33t Haxxors: Episode 3” on the show.  This is a show I co-wrote and directed and if it got enough votes last week, we’ll see it tonight.  The series already has over 200,000 online views, which is a good thing.  Check out the series at www.l33thaxxors.com.

Many thanks,

Mike