News From The Wasteland, and Prepare for the Scares!

Hey folks... happy new year!

>>First off, thanks to everyone who's written expressing their condolences on the loss of Buddy. Our household is adjusting, slowly... the girls have noticed the change in the rhythm of the household. They're starting to figure things out, though, and so are we.

Thanks, too, to all of you who wrote to wish me a happy birthday, and to let me know that you've seen my Tonkin commercial; apparently the "year-end sale" is still going on, since I just saw it on our local fox affiliate this evening. The producers are getting me a copy; once I have it in my grubby little hands I'll be sure to post it in the video section of haroldphillips.net.

>>I'm a little late getting my first post of the year up. Trish and I headed out of town to see my family up in Washington after Christmas, and their dial-up access made more than the occasional email check a bit trying. We had a wonderful time with everyone, though; we even went to Sears and got some family portraits done of the whole clan, including Trish, my brother James' wife and his kids (ok, the girls are his step-daughters... but who's worried about the symantics? We're all family).

Mostly, though, it was just a good excuse to spend some time with folks we hardly see any more.

>>Since I was up north and condemned to use dial-up internet access, I wasn't able to let you know the good news about Lady Wasteland. First off, episode 5 went live last Friday, and Episode 6 (Henry and Samantha's last episode in the pilot series) is live as of today.

Last week we passed 30,000 hits at http://www.ladywasteland.com/, and we continued to receive front-page placement on many popular video sharing sites such as Revver.com, DailyMotion and Crackle.com, where it received three editor’s choice awards. Annalee Newitz from http://www.io9.com/ wrote, "This cool show, co-created by Mark Roush, is a near-future version of Firefly with scrappy heroes on a brokedown frontier. It's exactly the kind of show that should get picked up by SciFi Channel now that Battlestar Galactica is heading into its final season".

Last week we were also added to The Director's Cut competition on MetaCafe.com. We're hoping that as many people as possible will click the link below to watch and rate the video, and then forward the link to their friends. The higher profile we get in the Director's Cut competition, the more likely we are to secure funds to continue the series. So please take a moment and vote at Metacafe.com by clicking this link:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/970655/lady_wasteland_a_post_apocalyptic_webisode_series/

So, it'll be really interesting to see where this all goes... given the amount of response Lady Wastland has received, the decay might just continue!

>> I freaked out a little bit on Wednesday... but then, I was supposed to.

Wednesday night we had our first read-through for Dead of Winter, the evening of ghost stories (written by phenomenal rock-star local playwright Steve Patterson) that I'll be appearing in this coming February. We all gathered around a table in the bowels of the University of Portland Mago Hunt Center (well, ok, it's the studio theater on the lower-level... but that's close enough to "bowels," right?) and met each other, then set to work reading Steve's plays Whitechappel, Fresh Paint and The Body.

I've got to be completely honest with you... I tell you no lies when I say that by the time the second play was finished, we all had goosebumps around the table. This is going to be one scary-ass show, folks. Steve has written some creepy scripts, and Lisa and he have assembled a wonderful cast to play in them.

The show is likely to sell quickly once the word gets around, so mark your calendars now for February 1st, and get in on the opening weekend. Some details are on the home page at http://www.haroldphillips.net/.

>> And finally, tonight a black man won the Iowa Caucuses.

Wow, huh?

I mean, you know I've been an Edwards supporter pretty much since he declared his intention to run (I think I've mentioned it on the blog a time or two... if not, now you know!) I think he's got the right mix of experience and progressive values to bring the focus back to what's important to Americans at this point in time: LIFE IN AMERICA!! I've been very happy to see that he's focused on the problems the middle class is facing right now, and that he's working to fix them.

That being said, though... how far have we come as a nation, to have one of the whitest states in the union (ok, I don't know that I can say that authoritatively... the figure I read, though, was something like 2.3% of Iowa is black, 3.4% Hispanic, and the rest is white) can vote fairly overwhelmingly for a black man to lead their country? I don't know that Obama will get the nomination... but this truly is a great moment in American history.

Compared to that, my little theatrical efforts don't amount to much. Hope you're all doing well, folks... have a good weekend.

-Harold