Are You Sure You Know Who's Reading?

For this cushy job in security at a major company (I'm practically CEO), there was a mandatory Occupational First Aid course. This OFA course could not be re-scheduled, and took place during the week of my birthday and also prevented me from doing a VFS writing short for which I was cast. But I'm not bitter.

During the course we were subjected to the inevitable First Aid videos. You know the ones: Guy A is doing something unsafe, which Guy B cautions him on, then Guy A hurts himself, and Guy B is the hero that ... walks with him to first aid. What a guy indeed.

This video had me and a fellow classmate laughing, because Guy B was played by an acting teacher of ours from VFS. Since being at VFS, I've seen my instructors pop-up in the oddest places: TV shows, movies-of-the-week, Marks Work Wearhouse and Shaw and London Drugs commercials. Obviously I'd see one in an OFA video, right? I spent the rest of the video just waiting for another instructor to walk into the first aid room with a log stuck in his head or something, but alas, there was just the one. Still, I laughed. I mean what sort of loser ends-up on these cheesy, awful cautionary videos regarding workplace safety?

Well.

Life has a tendancy to make things come full circle. I'm brought to mind Diamond Dallas Page driving The Honky Tonk Man's pink Cadillac at Wrestlemania VI at the SkyDome in Toronto, only to come back 12 years later and wrestle Christian at Wrestlemania X-8 in the very same building in the very same city.

My agent called today and told me I have an audition on Monday for something called "Manufacturing Safety". Now some titles for certain movies and TV shows these days have nothing to do with their content. Think about recent titles like the film "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". What? That title gives no indication of the content whatsoever. For all I know it could be a romantic comedy about a guy who dies and becomes an angel with a bow and arrow like Cupid, except his name is Stuart, and he's not too bright so they call him "Stupid", and he shoots people with his arrows who would never date each other in a million years, and one couple is a hardcore biker chick who is matched-up with a scrawny D&D geek, and she shows him how to live life on the edge and he teaches her all about THACO, and they fall in love for real and get married, but the biker chick's got a jealous ex-boyfriend who is also a biker and Hells Angels member, and he gets a bunch of his fellow gang members to beat-up the geeky guy, but it turns out he's a ninja, and he gets his fellow ninja clan members to battle the Hells Angels in an all-out no-holds-barred brawl for world supremacy. Or it could be about anything else, that's just an example.

So I take a look at the e-mail the agent sends me. Scroll down, role, shoot dates, audition location, blah-de-blah-blah. I get to production company: WorkSafeBC. This does not bode well. So I read the character breakdowns, and the script, which goes a little something like this:

It starts out very ominously, with a shipment arriving at a warehouse. But this shipment is NOT WHAT THEY ORDERED! So the delivery guy gives it to them anyway, claiming that he "just drives the truck", and speeds on his way home where he will likely smoke the marijuana like a cigarette.

Cut-to our hero family, with an excited, fresh-faced young man (the role I'm going out for) with my parental figures, working on a car. I've added some new "headers" (whatever that means) that I picked-up at the Toschi Station, along with some power converters. My dad says I'm just wasting time with my friends there, but he just doesn't get me man. Mom and dad head-off to work, and I head-off to the Toschi Station again, this time to pick up a suspension kit and to make trouble with the establishment, because I'm so painfully young and cool.

Dad arrives at work to find the botched shipment: A table shear, of the non-hydraulic variety THAT DOES NOT HAVE A GUARD! But they can't wait for a guard to be shipped because they have a DEADLINE, so they go to work anyway.

Meanwhile, at the Toschi Station, I decide to take a break from listening to the newest Linkin Park rock album on my Apple iPod, and give my old man a ring on my cellular telephone while I'm in the "Suspension Kits, Suspension bridges, suspenders" aisle. The "mousy" secretary takes my call, and calls-out to my dad on the work floor. This is where things go horribly wrong!

My poor father absent-mindedly waves to the secretary, and when he turns back to his work, he slips and his hand SLIDES UNDER THE BLADE, TAKING HIS FINGERS CLEAN OFF! The table shear then takes his fingers as they crumble to dust, leaving behind only a gold ring. The drill press urges the table shear to cast the ring into the incinerator of doom! To destroy it! The table shear simply says "no" and takes the ring for its own. That was the day the strength of table shears failed. The secretary comes out and finds my pop-pop in his predicament, calling for help (if only she took the OFA course ... )

As mom and I wait anxiously at the hospital, I am lost in thought. Thinking of the way life with my father will be now. No more throwing the football around, because he's left-handed, and can't one-hand catch worth squat. No more thumb wrestling. No more nose picking. Sure, he'll be able to pick his friends, but he won't be able to pick his nose, and picking his friend's nose is completely out of the question. No more paper-rock-scissors. He may be able to throw-down a small paper, or a super-stubby rock, but not scissors. Never scissors. Never again.



So that's how it's come full circle for me. I'm not complaining, I'll take whatever I can get at this point. Not because I'm desperate, but because I'm just starting-out. PSAs, commercials, nude modelling for "life art" classes, whatever. I'll just have fun with it, and treat it like any other audition. I just hope no one from WorkSafeBC reads how I trashed their ad.

Possible tagline for a new ad campaign on online safety:

Internet Blogs: Are you sure you know who's reading?