I'm the one on the left ...and on the poster in the background on the far right

This weekend, I was appearing at Starfest, all dressed up in honor of the screening of The Shadow Walkers at the convention. That's always fun, though I was a little surprised at how much I seemed to blend into the crowd. Maybe it's the way my beige jumpsuit matched the beige walls; I'm not sure. One easy way to distinguish me from the rest of the people at the con is that I'm the one who isn't a Klingon. That, and I'm not a stormtrooper. There were a *lot* of stormtroopers. I kept having the urge to loom up behind them and ask, "aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?" Though I only did that a few times during the con.

I was a bit puzzled by some of the questions people had after the movie; after watching the trials and tribulations of the hapless researchers trapped in a secret underground lab being pursued (and occasionally eaten) by their creation (um, that would be me), a member of the audience asked, "why did you film it in an indistrial facility rather than, say, out in an open field?"

Hmmmm...a lot of answers came to my mind, such as "most open fields don't really capture that whole 'secret underground laboratory' ambience" and "because, if a bunch of hapless researchers were in an open field, they'd probably just run away and what would that do to the plot?"

unless, I suppose, I could have used my cunning monster powers to convince them to stick around for a game of handball while I pretended to be an innocent umpire who killed and ate them whenever they stole a base or something.

Dunno. Not sure that would work. I mean, really, would anyone believe that there is such a thing as an innocent umpire?

How many days in a row can you have where the whole world changes?

I don't know what the limits are, but I know it's been quite the week. I still haven't gotten over having regular and frequent "wow" moments over it all. Not that I mind, really; it's a good kind of "wow"...the best kind, really. To understand it all, you'd have to know Wendy (shown here to the right) and that is quite the story. Maybe a few dozen stories, or a hundred. But suffice it to say that she's my case of "love at first sight," "the one I've never been able to get over," and "the woman of my dreams" rolled into one--which is really a tremendous advantage, when you think about it, because you can just imagine how rough the commute could get if these were all different women.

Wendy Wylde

For the fifteen years, we've never stayed together for long--certainly not anywhere near long enough, anyway--but we've never stayed apart for long either. Go figure that out, if you can.

Well, this past week we have. In a week, I've gone from asking, "hey, are we having a relationship?" to being engaged and living together. That's more than a few giant steps for me, but, despite my normally slow-and-cautious nature, it feels totally natural.

Like it was all supposed to be like this.

After fifteen years...plus this past week, it's both the slowest and the fastest relationship I've ever had. A little bit of everything...which is somehow appropriate for the woman who's everything to me.

Mark Griffen flips out in the Surfer King

Yesterday was the gala world premiere of The Surfer King which, to the best of my knowlege, is the first surfing movie ever to be shot in Colorado. It's a fun, family-oriented movie about the adventures and antics that the staff of the Water World theme park experience through the summer season, culminating in the annual competition between the employees for who can become the park's champion, the Surfer King.

That's Mark Griffen of Asgard Entertainment pictured upside-down right up there, doing the signature surfing flip for the movie. He went through a lot to be Randy Wayne's stunt double for The Surfer King. Just one of many reasons I'm glad to be an actor who does stunts rather than a stuntman who doubles other actors.

Maybe it's just as well that it's pretty hard to find someone else who looks enough like me that I even could double him for a film. There's probably a lot of people glad of that.

It was quite the to-do, with the proceeds from the event going to benefit The Hospice of Saint John, LALMBA, and The Hyland Hills Foundation. I was lucky enough to persuade the lovely and talented Wendy into being my date for the evening. Can't ask for much more than that. Well, okay, maybe I could, but being able to get away with it would be another matter. :)

Wendy and I outside the Buell Theatre

With 2,882 seats, the Tempel Buell Theatre is no small venue, and it was pretty nearly packed with all the people who had come to enjoy the show and mingle with the cast and crew afterwards.

Celebrity castmembers in attendance included Randy Wayne, Ben Ziff, Lindsay Wagner, and Gabriel Iglesias.

Mark Griffen, Mark Grove, Trygve Lode, Wendy Wylde, Michelle Grove

Mark Griffen, Mark Grove, me, and other members of the Asgard Entertainment stunt and effects team were there, too. You might not have seen our faces on the screen when you watched the movie, but I'm sure if we all stuck bags over our heads, you'd recognise us in an instant. :)

Wendy and I with the Surfer King himself, Randy Wayne

The party afterwards stretched on into the night, featuring--believe it or not--live surfin' music provided by The Aquasonics.

Last night it was off to see "Stained Glass Windows," starring Emelie O'hara, Christopher Atkins, and Kristie Griever. This was a little different from my more typical action/adventure fare: it's a complex story of a young woman whose face gets carved up by an abusive boyfriend, how she deals with rejection and derision from her classmates, and her struggle to regain her trust and closeness with those around her.

I thought it had a lot of touching moments and portrayed a complex web of interrelated personal relationships and events without ever becoming confusing or distracting from our heroine's emotional journey. Even if the movie was a drama rather than something in the action/adventure genre, we still managed a bit of adventure that evening. Turns out that Emelie and I had parked our cars in a nearby parking garage that had invitingly advertised, "Evenings after 4PM: $5.00." Little did we suspect that the parking garage would be sealed after the movie. Calling the phone number for the parking garage management company revealed that they closed at 8:00...for the weekend. For a mere $5, you could store your car from Friday at 4:00PM until Monday morning. A pretty good deal--if you'd gone downtown for a complete performance of Handel's Messiah. But we hadn't.

me with Emelie O'hara, star of Stained Glass Windows

Fortunately, looking around the garage, we found a sign listing the "emergency number." I don't know if our predicament qualified as a serious emergency, but I figured it was worth a call. The worst that could happen is that they'd tell me to buck up and wait for Monday, try to bill me for calling with a false emergency, and then go berserk and start running amok with a pair of loaded automatic rifles, shooting up the downtown area, possibly killing hundreds of innocent people and several of the horses that they have downtown to pull the horse-drawn carriages available for hire, should you be in the mood for a romantic carriage ride on a cool spring evening.

But what are the odds of that happening? Besides, I do have a bullet-proof vest. Um...somewhere.

None of my fears were realized. I just got a recording. Turns out that the "emergency number" is only answered until 6:00PM. I should have remembered that emergencies only happen during banking hours. I don't know how that could have slipped my mind.

Eventually we were able to locate a security office and get someone to open up the gates. He was actually quite nice about it. He didn't grumble a bit, and if he did any running amok with automatic weapons, that was after we'd left.

He explained that closing the garage in the evenings was a new policy, so they hadn't gotten the updated signs in yet. Maybe in a week or two. In the meantime, he'd still honor the $5 advertised price tag. At least our adventure didn't end up being more expensive than we'd expected.