Hi Everyone! I miss Twitter! Read my latest news!!

What’s up people! I have never been away from Twitter longer than a day let alone 1 month! YIKES!! Well let me tell ya, I have been super busy! No I mean SUPER busy.. I am in UCLA taking a full time nights program in Movie Directing! YUP! :D So in the future I can provide you all with a more professional and finer level of entertainment! So not only do I do all these things that fill my week, like work full time, try to do my show which feels like it’s on the back-burner temporarily but I’m in UCLA full time nights and I have film projects to do and have to help the members in my Directors Workshop class do THEIR projects too! Holy Smokes my plate is full, I’m even on location with them, like this weekend we shot a short on Venice beach which was loads of fun. So my brain is going and going and going, now my brain is plotting and planning my short stories for my own projects which is hard work, but enjoyable and I am learning so much you simply can’t believe it!

Let me describe the UCLA campus at Westwood, its FREAKIN HUGE! Like an entire town! Nestled between Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and Hollywood and runs along Sunset BLVD, it’s beautiful, I feel like I’m part of the next generation of people who influence the world or something and I hope I do! There’s no feeling like walking around that campus, I feel like its sacred ground! The students are amazing! My classes are mostly students from all over the world, from Peru, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Iran, you name it! They are all here to learn from UCLA’s famous Directors program, which is a world renowned program. Some of my teachers are even CalArts film teachers! Muhahahahaaa! (I never got in to CalArts but now I don’t feel so bad about it, I’m right on coarse.)

So anyway, I with you guys in Spirit, even though I’m underneath a pile of work and creative learning, I have ideas to bring forth and I need the tools to create them, so I am sacrificing some time now so I can shine later! Shine I will with blinding brightness! So even though I do peak in Twitter once and a while, I may not be able to chat like I used to before, just for a little while longer, I will keep you informed through blogs for now, thanks for the Follow Friday shout outs! They keep me motivated for sure!!

OK guys, back to the grind for me. Enjoy this fall season, do good in school and follow your dreams!

That’s all for now,

Rob Redstone

:D

To Be An Artist Is To Fail, As No Other Dare Fail…

The title of this blog says it all! Picture mastering everything you do, and quickly! Picture always having the 'edge' over others, even if you just 'think you do'. Now picture taking a stand-up comedy class with wind in your sails, secretly being in competition with everyone, and planning to be the funniest guy your teacher has ever seen, and mastering this class as you have mastered everything else.

In the military to 'Bomb' is to defeat the enemy! In stand-up comedy, to 'Bomb' is to get up in front of everyone, have your eyes squint from the bright spotlight (that's beamed right at your face preventing you from seeing the entire audience), carefully take the microphone from its holder on the mic stand, and gracefully put the mic stand behind you as you plan to set the audience into hysterical laughter but the complete opposite happens. You get into your set-up, only to find your material fails to 'make them laugh' and you get to your punch lines and your brain has every spot mapped out that you planned on hearing laughter and snickers. But on the contrary, you hear dead silence. You keep going while the capillaries in your face dilate and the room gets smaller, congratulations! You sir, are BOMBING and BOMBING BIGTIME! You have just failed!

Well, at least the sting of embarrassment goes away 20 minutes after you sit down while your praying that your class forgets how bad you just were. You discover after your 3rd and 4th class that this time, you are in something completely bigger than you! This is no easy bit of learning, that to make another human laugh while planning all of this funny verbiage is one immense feat! Only 0.001% of the population actually takes a stand-up comedy class, because most of the population is sane and does not like humiliation week after week. LOL.

But I'm not alone. Every classmate has bombed along with me week after week, and we still come back for more, we at least some of us do, I have noticed the class getting smaller. I did a skit last week were I play a guy who has been married for over 10 years and is attracted to his wife's hot friends and pretends his wife's friend Kelly who is coming over for dinner is the closest thing he has to a date with another woman, yeah this guy is really pushing it but there is this skit in the bathroom where he gets ready in the mirror to the song 'Sexy Bitch' from David Guetta and in theory it was going to be hysterical, but it may have been more uncomfortable to watch than the worst American Idol audition you've ever seen. I can still hear the teacher say, "what was that music?".

But am I learning ANYTHING? You betcha! I am learning comedic timing, how to speak to a large, live audience and actually relate to them. I'm learning what its like to talk on an amplified microphone in a large room or auditorium and hear yourself being blasted out and trying to concentrate or your monologue. I've also learned I can memorize an entire page of script and more, even recite it verbatim. I feel like I have a very high tolerance for embarrassment (if that will get you somewhere, who knows!). I am taking chances that are bigger but falling harder on my face. I am definitely growing a bigger set of b@lls from this experience (or getting mental complexes LOL), and it is only just 1/4th the way down this road.

I noticed that when one of my fellow comics does get a laugh, you can see his face and soul glow with excitement! That is the big payday just knowing that the snippet of material you wrote got a laugh! You note how you said it, the speed the words came out, the attitude you had while saying it, every single nuance you remember for next time. This joke should make people laugh time after time if done the same or better.

So I am HUMBLED! I have a bigger respect for the comics who go out and lay it all on the line and actually make the crowd laugh! Getting into stand-up comedy is no joke. It's a crazy beast. You need to have self confidence and self assuredness more than your average person. You need to have to have a tolerance for failure. A high tolerance for failure. Because you are about to jump into a deep dark pit of failure, with big scary Failure Monsters and are expected to climb out, eventually. Hence, "To Be An Artist Is To Fail, As No Other Dare Fail…" It couldn’t be said any better than that. Can you imagine putting yourself through so much failure? I suppose the fruit must taste delicious from a tree who fought tooth and nail to stretch himself and grow and to be cut down and to stretch and grow even more, and fair well after many storms finally to bear fruit.

Well, under the heading of my blog, I would love to list 'comedian' but not yet my friends, not yet, but soon.

I hope you enjoyed my latest blog!
Rob Redstone

IMPROV Class Shows Your Weaknesses! Great to Improve Yourself!

So not only is my improv class getting amazingly fun, I am getting braver by the second! Today was a great day in improv, I had some really funny scenes.. But BEWARE! You must still listen to EVERY word that comes out of your class mates mouths, or you can get yourself in trouble, or rather look foolish and have everyone have a great belly laugh at your expense! Which is what happened to me today, twice.

No big deal, I shook it off and laughed with them and was like UGH!! But this class for me is a God-send because, if you have flaws or areas that need fixing, you're going to lay it all out in the open in from of the world and find out about it, and everyone else will see your flaws too. My flaw is I need to listen MUCH better to what happens before I interject myself into a scene.

For instance, today we did a scene game with 2 people who start and go with a part of info grabbed from another students monologue and go with it. Then you are allowed to do a 'walk on' where you can enter their scene temporarily and have some lines, influence the scene in some way and walk off.. Their scene was from a section of a monologue where, in the story, a couple goes to Hong Kong after their wedding but plans if before the husband gets fired. So as I was planning my 'walk on', the husband states in the scene that he got fired today. I obviously did not hear him say it and I do my walk on and knock on an imaginary door for him to answer only to break the news to him that I am from his job and I am laying him off. Well, that got huge laughs because he already said he got fired today! So where was my brain! Oh well, it really was funny anyway, it's tiny words or sentences that are not processed by your brain can really bite you in the butt!

But in the long run, seeing that I have a flaw to overcome, and the exact nature of the flaw, is great, now I can work on that and nip it in the butt. This really is great for my show too. Imagine I was with a celeb and miss heard something they said and fired back with something completely stupid! It's a class like this that shows you your weaknesses' and areas that need improvement....

This class is great and worth every penny! Plus I really have nerves of steal and can get up in front of many people and do my thing, even if I screw up, it's not the end of the world, just react to screwing up like a pro and move on..

That's all for today's blog!
Rob Redstone

Spreading My Wings in IMPROV Class!

So I always do battle with myself before I go to my IMPROV class, it's a battle over fear, anxiety and attitude. But after I change my attitude, I am ready for the class. So we started off doing the regular exercises and did the singing game like we did last week. Although the energy wasn't there like it was last week. Joel said it was the most 'mellow' he had ever saw that singing game. Probably because last night was a big party night, even Joel had a slight voice problem, he said he was filming last night and that's how his voice was shot.

Anyway, we took a break, and when we got back, the class seemed to be 'ON' so that was good! We did a new exercise called the Chameleon (like the lizard) and we got into a circle and one person in the center. Then one of us goes up to him and does a character and the guy in the center has to improvise the scene and match 100% the way the person acting towards you is doing. So If I went up to that center guy and acted like 'The God Father' he had to replicate my acting but keep the conversation going back and forth for about 4 lines each, till the guy who went up to him gets tapped out by another who pretends she won the lottery and now center guy is jumping all over screaming till another tap out and now it's a child crying over losing her doll, now center guy had to copy that but make more lines to keep it going. After center guy does that for 4 times, Joel will make one of the students who came up to center dude and now he or she becomes the center person.. So always both center person and regular person are acting the same character together, no matter how crazy or outlandish!

That was a blast because these students really knew how to mess with you and make you have range from a crying baby to a star from a wild west movie so it was awesome!
Next we had 2 person scenes that again, we had to establish who we were in relation to each other and where we were. It starts from a single word called out by the audience only you had to be the character from an earlier exercise. Mine has the father of an ex-girlfriend, he was Italian from Brooklyn (an old goom-bah), he was old and had part of his vocal chords removed and was half deaf (in real life)! So I really nailed his whole sound and persona and got LOTS of laughs with that one! After, Joel critiques the skit, he used the phrase "That was VERY FUNNY" and "loved that!".. So I was in the ZONE!

I learned a lot, instead of using 'one liners', just bring life to the scene as best as you can and the laughs come automatically.. If you focus on making jokes for laughs, you will ruin the scene and may not get laughs at all.. So now I forget about the audience sitting down in from of me while I'm on stage and I just bring life to my character and the scene as a whole and go with whatever my partner says and go with it! So I definitely grew bolder today as well as others in the class did.

Anyway, I'm left knowing I'm getting better and funnier in this class, and feeling more free to do more outlandish things in front of people and having it be a good thing! Laughter is music to my ears and I got lots of that today.. Now to see one more show at the UCB theater to fill my homework obligation. I did hear a quick blurb about the show we have to put on to graduate from this class from 101 to 201. But I will not think about it till those days arrive. Now I keep hearing in my head "Take a scene study class after this". And my answer is, YES I WILL!

OH, earlier we had a character development exercise and we had to walk around and got advice from Joel as we all walked around each other and at a certain moment he said 'STOP' and we had to have a conversation with whoever was next to us in 'the character', I was 'Elf' from the movie Elf with Will Ferrell, Oh it was so good, not only did I see that movie (I forget I may like it more that Nightmare Before Christmas)20 times, I really nailed 'Elf', I did it with a young woman that happens to be from my building! (Can't wait to see her in the elevator this week! LOL) I was like "someone needs a hug!" Hah.., Oh, and I did the bit where I describe how I went through the "sea of swirly twirly gumdrops and went through the Lincoln Tunnel" Ahhhh, that was great... LOL! I also mentioned the elf's major food groups, sugar, candy, candy canes, candy corns, and more sugar!.. Until next Sundays IMPROV class!!

I hope you all enjoyed my second blog!!
Peace Out Home Dogs!
Rob Redstone

This weekends IMPROV Class!

So today was class 4 of 8 hosted at the Hyperion Theater (right between Hollywood and my home in Glendale CA, although classes are really UCB (Upright Citizens Brigade Theater) classes which I now have my class ID with. An excellent recommendation from my friend Romi Dames (Hannah Montana's Tracie Van Horn who is Hannah's friend and party planner with the nasal voice on the show). My teacher is Joel Spence who is as excellent as Romi said he would be, he has an IMDB page and has been seen on 'How I Met Your Mother' playing 'Toy Guy', if you watch that show you know how awesome it is!

Anyway, the class is PURE WORK, no kidding here, today was the first day it was more fun and mostly shot right by, well at least the first half anyway. We did almost like a game where we (16 of us) got into a circle and the teacher shouts out one word to start our direction and one of us goes in the center and sings out loud a song that that word reminds him of, (the class has to sing along if they know the words) then the class can't leave him up there singing, so if he says a word or phrase that reminds you of a song, you have to enter the circle and tap him, he is then relieved of his singing and you start your song and everyone now sings your song, and it keeps going. Man that was fun.

Joel said this exercise will be your worst nightmare or you were BORN TO DO THIS GAME. Well, me and the class were Born to do it because, we rocked it! One of my songs was from an OLD TV show theme song (show was 'Greatest American Hero') so I sang "Believe it or not, I'm waLKIN ON AIR, i NEVER THOUGHT i COULD FEEL SO FREE-EE-EE", (sorry bout the caps), I didn't think many would know it but they did and supported me immediately! Ahhhh, good times. I think being soo vulnerable like that singing when none of us, (ok one of us was good) was a good singer. But singing quality was no factor in this game, it was the continuation of a word or phrase in the song inspiring you to be next to save your buddy. You definitely see how the songs are cleverly connected! We definitely bonded during that exercise.

Next came 2 person improvisation scenes which simply cannot be predicted if they are good or bad or great or hilarious. You need to establish who you are in relation to each other and where you are during your dialogue, and sometimes you have to use an imaginary object before you can reply to each other, that was a blast!

So next week on Saturday, I resume my mentoring classes with my radio show mentor (a 20 year veteran in radio here in LA), I will be at a hub of 6 radio stations in a real radio studio and practicing announcing, voice-over and commercials, right here in GLENDALE of coarse (I got side tracked with these mentoring sessions because of my move).. And then on Sunday I will be at my IMPROV class so I will be pretty beat during my work week.. This IMPROV class has inspired me to take a 'scene study' class..and be part of a play or show here at the UCB theater. I definitely have the bug to act, some of my earlier shows I acted for comedy reasons and I enjoy physical comedy. I really want to do more than I let on that I want to do, even start an animation studio. When I went to Design school on the east coast, I learned Lightwave 3D and still have passions for 3D animation.

That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed my first blog!
Rob Redstone