Tonight, I make a guest appearance on The Cooper Lawrence Show -- a national radio broadcast that you can listen to live on line, streaming at
www.TheCooperLawrenceShow.com or you can podcast it tomorrow on iTunes and listen at your convenience.  I'm scheduled to visit the show between 8 and 9 o'clock tonight so check it out if you get a chance...

 

Did Cooper Lawrence's radio show last night. Great to see her again and re-connect. We spent the first 20 minutes or so on air mourning the fact that the Discovery Show we did together will probably never hit air. I don't know how entertaining it was to her listeners but it was certainly therapeutic for us.

Found out yesterday that my webcast, NewzViewz, is going dark for awhile. Unfortunate but necessary. The people behind the site -- www.channelblast.com -- need to situate funding for the long-term health of the venture and putting the show down for now allows them to turn all their time and resources towards that. I wish them luck because I certainly have fun doing the work (and my audience seems to like it too -- because they keep coming back to the show)!

The next few days I'll be shooting a new project for HP on the internet. It's all for a site called mavericks. com. More details as they become available...

 

Just wrapped work on a job for a new work website sponsored by HP. It's called www.mavericks.com and it highlights the accomplishments of small business owners around the world (while using HP products, thank you very much). It may sound a little lame on the face of it but it was actually very cool. I learned alot by interviewing some very smart, cutting-edge business people. And the crew was great. The director was a guy by the name of Zach Merck (here on MySpace as well). He makes most of his living shooting music videos and commercials. We had a great time profiling these business folks while also having some fun with it. Looking forward to you guys checking it out. I'm told the stuff we shot should be up on the site by the end of October or mid-November. I'll let you know...

Bob

 

So I'm still learning the etiquette here on MySpace -- specifically regarding friend requests. I don't want to be rude to people but, at the same time, I don't want to build of list of "friends" that I don't know and/or don't support in some form or fashion. If I get a sense people I don't know are genuine fans of my work or whatever, I'm adding them. But if I think they're just trying to add me to build their overall friend numbers (ala Dane Cook), then I'm passing. I don't know. Is that wrong and/or rude, here? Like I said, I'm still learning the etiquette...

This week is back to full time work on writing and creating. Lunch meeting with my manager kicks things off tomorrow...

 

Had a good meeting with my manager yesterday. It was an opportunity for us to re-connect and set some goals for the coming months. I come away from our meeting knowing I have 3 very clear goals for the rest of the year:

1.) Write and produce the viral video ideas I have with Matt, my writing partner.

2.) Put up another run of our sketch show, Adult Contemporary -- making it the best it can be.

3.) Developing a story outline for a screenplay draft.

In the new year, my immediate goals will be:

1.) Completing a draft of a screenplay.

2.) Putting up a talk show at The PIT.

I'm most excited, right now, by the talk show. I already have a lot of thoughts I'm very excited about exploring. The good news about putting up your own show on stage is you have no one but yourself to go to for the final decisions. So the show truly reflects who you are and what you want to do with it. My working title for the project is, "We Have Ways of Making You Talk."

In between all this stuff, I'm back into the audition circuit. Yesterday, I did a couple of commercial auditions (one a callback for BJ's). Today, another commercial audition and an audition for a comedy pilot produced by HBO and written by a couple of friends of mine. We'll see what happens...

 

So I had a callback yesterday for a friend's sitcom pilot and an old nemesis of mine reared it's ugly head again. Sweat. When I get nervous, I sweat. I mean reaaaaallly sweat. It's hard to make a good impression in an audition when you're sweating profusely with a director and executive producer you just met. I hate it. But what can I do?! Everyone shows their nervousness in different ways: shaking, stuttering, blanking out, etc. Me? I sweat like I'm on a 72-hour cocaine binge. It's just my cross to bare I guess. Needless to say, I don't think I'm going to book the job.

I really hate auditions sometimes. "Just give me the job and let me do my thing on set!" is what I think to myself when I'm struggling through a rough audition. I mean most auditions are very awkward and intimidating. You walk into a room full of strangers who are judging you from the moment you walk in. How comforting is that?! To make it worse, in a big audition, there are usually one or two "suits" who are sitting there stoic like it's punishment for them to be there. They don't laugh. They don't smile. They just sit there and judge. It's awful. Like I said, I hate auditions (sometimes). The gigs I like best are when somebody is familiar with my work, knows what I can do, brings me in for a meeting to talk about the project and then hires me do it. Unfortunately, I need to get bigger credits (which means more auditioning) to graduate to that level of booking jobs on a consistent basis. Why? Because, bottom line, for good or bad we live in a star-f*&#er society. If a "star" is attached to something, we have more of a tendency to go see it over someone we've never heard of -- even if that someone is way better for the role than the "star" is. Oh well... I have another callback today -- this one for a commercial for Microsoft -- so it's back in the ring!


 

There is a God. I booked a spot for BJ's Wholesale Club yesterday. Nice. Should be a good spot and I love the director I'm working with on it so it should be fun.

Typed up a draft of a script for one of the viral videos my writing partner, Matt Oberg, and I are putting together last night. I'm happy with it but I'm sure Matt will rip it apart. ;-)

By the end of this month, I should have a completely revamped website -- www.bobwiltfong.com -- and several viral videos near completion. Good to be busy...

I've officially pitched a talk show to The PIT for a run in the new year. I'm very excited about the prospect of putting my stamp on what a talk show is and can be these days. It will only be as good as the work I put into it so here I go...

 

So I don't know if you noticed but there's a lot of porn folks here on MySpace. Every other day I get an invitation from them to join one of their webcam groups. And periodically one of them will send me a message just to say "Hi." At first, I would visit their sites -- "maybe they're a fan of my work," I thought, or "she looks like a nice girl". But it soon became apparent to me that these girls were not interested in talking about comedy as much as they were interested in pointing out how big their boobs were (and many of their boobs, I have to say, are amazingly large).

As a result of this, I'm starting to develope a porn-dar here at MySpace: if it looks like a porn person (and smells like a porn person), it's most likely a porn person.

Here's my plea to these folks: I like porn as much as the next guy but with all the time and energy you're spending promoting how "naughty" you are and how you "like to party," could you please expend the same effort towards a more worthy cause? Perhaps being an actual fan of my work and getting me more jobs in TV and film?

Thank you.

 

Heather, you are correct! I assume I am doing this incorrectly, then? I'll figure it out (eventually)...
 

Shot a TV commercial for BJ's Wholesale Club on Tuesday. Should start airing on a tube near you in mid-November. It's a fun spot. Basically, I'm duplicated several times in the spot so several versions of me are going around the store interacting with myself. I'm looking forward to seeing the final cut. Good, fun crew.

Last night participated in a reading for a new play at the New York Theater Workshop. Good experience. Glad to be involved. Afterwards, I joined Matt, Ashley and Andy to rehearse our sketch show, Adult Contemporary. Feel very good about where things have come on it. I'm proud of what we have.

 

 

I've seen The Departed and Flags of Our Fathers recently. The Departed is excellent. Jack Nicholson is great in it and Leonardo DiCaprio impressed me (maybe for the first time) with his acting. Flags of Our Fathers is good too (not as good as The Departed, in my opinion). Like most Clint Eastwood-directed films, it feels like a nice stroll through the park: even-keeled, pleasant, solid. I'm looking forward to the release of: The Hoax, The Borat Movie (although I'm getting a little turned off by all the exposure for it at this point) and Babel.

 

It's official. Jill and I are pregnant again! Baby two is due sometime in May. I"m a dad, man. Crazy. Within the span of a year-and-a-half, we'll be doubling the number in our house-hold. It's all good. Love being a dad. All the cliches about caring for your kids are true. There's nothing more I love on this earth than our little guy...

 

New year. New show. I debut a new talk show at my home theater in NYC tomorrow night. It's named, aptly enough, Talk Show with Bob Wiltfong. It's up every Thursday night at 8pm at The P.I.T. (www.thepit-nyc.com). It's going to be a lot of fun. If you're against fun, please don't come. Thanks.

Comedy Central objected to me posting my old Daily Show stories on YouTube (Boo! Comedy Central! Boo!) so, as a result, ALL my videos have been taken down. I'll try to rectify that soon. I know I WON'T be posting any of my Viacom/Comedy Central stuff there. Gotta make sure the suits make more money...

 

Hello! It's been awhile I know. I'm trying to make a steady commitment to blogging here and at my website -- www.bobwiltfong.com -- in the future. So here we go!

Adding "friends" here on MySpace is a little odd. I don't want to just add whoever asks -- ala Dane Cook. But I also don't want to be rude and deny "friend"ship to people who honestly have good intentions by reaching out to me. Sooooo...

Each time I get a friend request, I check out that person's profile and try to figure out: A.) Is this a person I know OR someone that someone I know knows?, B.) Is this someone who is honestly a fan/supporter of who I am and what I do? If the answer is yes to either question, I usually accept them. If the answer is no, I usually say no to them as a "friend." Basically, I want "friends" on MySpace who are good people and not weirdos or star-f___ers in some way.

My policy on this whole business may change but, for now, that's how I handle it.

On the flipside of this whole thing, I've been a little insulted by some of the denials I've gotten from people requested "friend"ship from them. For instance, I asked Ed Helms and Stephen Colbert -- two guys I know and have worked with in the comedy world to be my friends here -- and both of them did not accept my invitations. What the hell is up with that?! I would like to think it's an innocent oversight but the paranoid part of me thinks, "They don't want to be my friend!"

And then there's Will Ferrell. I don't know the guy. Never met him. But I'm a big fan of his work and, as a result, I asked him to be my "friend" here on MySpace. Initially he agreed. I was psyched. Cool! I added him to my "Top Friends" -- and other well-known comedians I don't know but admire (Mike Myers, Larry David, etc.) -- as a way of saying to anyone out there, "Hey. I think these people are great."

Then, lo and behold, Will Ferrell pulls his "friend"ship from me. Again, what the hell?!  Obviously, (just like with Ed and Colbert) I have no way of knowing why he pulled his "friend"ship from me here -- and, most likely, it was something innocent -- but the insecure part of me thinks it was some type of personal slight towards me. Which, if the case, is too bad because all I was trying to say to the guy was, "Hey. I like your work, man." Anyway...

This whole thing is stupid, I know. But I also know I'm not the only way who goes through these thoughts while adding/denying "friends" on MySpace. I just thought I'd share...

!