moby dick, the mezzanine, demon haunted world
i'm in hollywood, where do i fucking begin, people?
from "introductions"
I'm Dean Cameron. I'm 44 and live in Los Angeles, California. For many years I made a fine living as a professional actor. Then I didn't. Now I make a fine living doing voice overs for radio and t.v., an occasional television commercial and an even more occasional appearance in a movie or t.v. show. To keep from losing my mind, I do contract work doing basic web programming, html, asp, php/mysql, etc. Right now, I'm working on a site redesign at an online legal provider.
For the last few years, I've traveled to several foreign countries performing a show I wrote based on a Nigerian scambaiting correspondence called "The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam". We did an early version at TAM2 and at an end of the year Skeptic's Society meeting in Pasadena.
I am one of the few members of the Screen Actors Guild who does not believe in anything supernatural and that, my skeptical friends, is a tough row to hoe. I suppose that one of the benefits of not working in t.v. and film as much as I used to is not having to listen to the worthless crap showbiz folks talk about. Most of them can't fathom not believing astrology and when they learn that I'm not "spiritual" or don't have an imaginary friend who created all the flowers, it gets really, really ugly. One would think that, as artists, we would be challenging "civil" society's customs and beliefs; ridding ourselves of their gods and other superstitions, but most of them are into all sorts of hooey.
I was always a bit unsure of things like astrology, psychics and such; thinking that "there MUST be some things we just don't know", but around 1986, one of my girlfriend's friends was told by a psychic that to remove a curse, she had to bury lots of her jewelry and $500 cash near a special tree the psychic knew of. When I suggested that it just might possibly be a scam, my girlfriend burst into tears and her friend didn't speak to me for about a year. ** Soon after, a friend (not an actor) mentioned "Flim Flam", and everything fell into place. Until then, I had no idea that "organized skepticism" existed.
I began subscribing to the Skeptical Inquirer and was even able to get a shot of me reading it in a movie. Well it was like a movie. It was called "Ski School" so... you know... the point is that it's clear that I am reading The Skeptical Inquirer. I think I'm the only actor who has ever done something like that.
Several years ago, I finally met a woman who was able to understand that science is much more interesting than pseudoscience and she is now my bride and is also a skeptic/atheist and a huge fan of The Skeptics Guide. We refer to them as the Skeptic Superfriends and I enjoy entertaining her with my impressions of Bob getting excited about nanotech.
I was thrilled when I happened upon the The Skeptics Guide podcast late last year and have listened to each and every episode. It's now one of my favorite pieces of media... not just podcasts. I think they should have a show on satellite radio or some such thing.
If you want to know what the chatter is like in the make-up trailer or at lunch on a set, listen to the Neal Adams episode. He has the perfect combination of being well-spoken, arrogant, smug and completely clueless. It was so familiar I couldn't listen to the podcast in one sitting.
Speaking of smug and arrogant, I do believe that this introduction has gone on way too long, but I certainly won't make it any shorter.
My pet peeve is all of myspace.com and people who use an apostrophe to pluralize words... or... word's.
**the girl buried the cash and was totally ripped off.