Alltel gig

I was watching TV with Tracy a week or so ago and one of those Alltel commercials came on. One of the ones with Chad with the pointy blond hair and the four geeks that consistently fail to do bad things to him. I looked at Trace and said, "I hate these commercials".

The next day I got a call from my agent.

Yup. An Alltel commercial. With Chad and the four geeks who consistently fail to do bad things to him. We shot it last Friday at the newly renovated Book Cadillac Hotel in downtown Detroit.

I'm just an extra on it, (one of a couple of dozen), so it's not a particularly big deal except that it's part of their national campaign, so I'll get my mug all over America for a few weeks and that'll give my kids and my grandkids a chuckle.

I usually don't like to do extra roles, because as I have said before, anyone can do that. You don't even have to be an actor to get those gigs. (You could get that gig. All you gotta do is have the look they want and be able to follow simple directions. A couple of years in a Catholic school is all the experience you really need).

But, it was a Union Job, so there is a buy-out and it made me a few hundred bucks on a day when I would of otherwise made nothing.

So.

Good deal for me.

Next time you're fast-forwarding through one of those commercials and you see Chad and David Stremme (a Nascar guy who was in the shoot) sitting at a dais like they're in a press conference, slow it down and look front-row center, on the aisle where the "press" is sitting. From the back you will see the little half-acre of vacant lot on the back of my head where I used to grow hair, and from the front you will see my smiling face. (Acting! Ahh thank you.)

And by-the-by, Chad and company are actually pretty cool guys. They know what they have fallen into (a gold-mine) and they are grateful and humble about the whole thing. The two most frequently asked questions? "Is your real name Chad?" (Yes. From Peoria for gods sake), and "What happened to the original fat guy?" (Um, can't really talk about it, but green grass on the far side of fences isn't always what it seems.)