So, a long, long time ago over on the View Askew message board (where I hang out on occassion), Kevin Smith posted that he was going to be interviewing Tom Cruise later that day or somesuch and for us to ask some questions. I barely recall typing one in, most likely on company time, and just not thinking about it again.

Well, today, the New Askew website posted the interview, and almost at the very end, I read a question and it just seems oddly familiar, and I’m nearly certain it was my question, and Tom Cruise answered the question and at the end, added: “These are great questions, by the way. I gotta tell ya.”

So, here is my full interview with Mr. Cruise. If you want to read Kevin’s full interview, which is much, much larger and includes my question, go to New Askew and read the scans of the magazine. You’ll have to squint a little.

My question: Has your celebrity prevented you from making different types of films than perhaps you might be interested in making? Like a back-up or secondary role in a film that might have caught your eye without the stigma of ‘the next Tom Cruise film’ attached to it?

Tom’s reply to me (through Kevin, of course): I felt that when I did Magnolia. But I don’t feel that [being Tom Fucking Cruise] as a stigma at all. I feel that as a privilege. i feel that I have the opportunity to do things. I’ve never felt limited by it; I’ve never said, “Well, okay, I can’t do this because…” But it’s also a huge investment for me when I act in a movie. It’s not, “Oh, I’m just gonna show up!” I mean, I could do something fun. I liked doing Austin Powers. I went in for four hours, had a laugh. I showed up in Young Guns. And then Magnolia. But I take a lot of pride in what i do, and when I do something, I can’t just go, yeah, read the script, yeah, I’m going to go play. That would be me taking advantage of celebrity. Any role that I commit to, it’s an investment. It’s an emotional, physical investment into that character. With Magnolia, even though I only worked about a week and a half, I spent four months prepping that character. These are great questions by the way, I gotta tell ya.”

So, there you have it, by first tangental run-in with Tom Cruise, before he options my novel.

UPDATE: Oops, not quite. Just checked back and someone found the old thread where we originally asked questions. I asked about the roles he has been taking lately, but then went in a different direction, about how he has been using “masks” in recent roles to obscure his face (Vanilla Sky, Minority Report) and if that was a conscious choice to let people see his acting more than his “Tom Cruise”ness. Oh well, ALMOST a brush with Tom Cruise.

Playing off the recent question of where my money went happened this morning, since it was payday, and all I did was channel $1800 over to my credit card. Leaving a few hundred for me to make it to the end of the month.

It brought up similar questions as before, the whole where did I used to spend all my money, and then, as if by cue, a FedEx package arrived at my desk. I open it up, and inside are three bottles of wine.

Oh yes, my 2000 Late Harvest Semillion from Van Der Hayden Vineyards. Jeremy and I both bought futures in this wine about two years ago, at $75 a bottle, with a three bottle minimum. Now, the wine costs $125 at the winery, so we did get a great deal, I mean $50 off per bottle is amazing, but… $225 on wine? Yikes. And I have no room for them, because I have so much wine here. I guess I’m finding “some” of my old money.

Other news, no pay raise coming, which is odd. When they were doing reviews in December, they announced in public meetings that the pay raises wouldn’t kick in until February, but would be retroactive until January 1. You would think that would mean everyone was getting something? Nope. We just know someone else is. More great motivation.

Now, I have been on the record that I don’t want more money because that usually means more responsibility. But I’ve been getting more responsibility, so bring on the cash.

My boss did say she would try to make up for it with options. Guess there’s no way to indicate the options will never matter, since I won’t be here a year later when they vest. Oh well… hopefully the market will have an uptick and I can make up for this by selling the options I do have. We’ll see.

Been removing a few conveniences lately…

Today, I called PayTrust and canceled my membership, which means my bills will once again start coming to… my home, and need to be paid… with stamps. Of course, once I have $5K in the bank, I can activate Bill Pay there and forgo the stamp part for no charge, but not until there is $5K there so it isn’t a new monthly fee.

I am down to only paying about fix or six bills a month, so I am basically paying $8.95 to Paytrust, and $3 to Wells Fargo, so save less than $2 in postage and the inconvenience of having to pay bills. Oh well, too bad.

I also canceled Netflix, since I tend to see most movies in the theater, which means my NetFlix watching has mainly been movies I didn’t get around to seeing in the theater, weird independent movies, and TV series. So, I think I am better served without Netflix. The only problem is… I can’t find one of my rentals. I have to get it to them this week, or I own it, so I really should finish this post and go dig through things.

I also e-mailed Van Der Hayden Vineyards and canceled my wine club membership, so that is another thing that is leaving, but that is expensive wine coming quarterly. I’d rather make wines like that something for special occassions, and not just have bottles and bottled of it sitting around the house.

Selling gay pulp fiction on eBay, and always looking for the next thing that will end up on eBay.

Oddly enough, with all the little fixing ups I am doing around the house, I also just put it out there that my friend Darrel, who is looking for a place, could consider me a third roomate if they found a great palce and needed it. I’m not sure I’d be up for moving, but I am certainly up for being off the hook for an additional $300 a month, and if the bedroom were large enough, why not? I’ve never really done the roommate thing, but that is much saner than finding two strangers. Doubt it will happen, but I think they are trying to make a 3BR into a twosome, but that does make the rent high. We’ll see.

In the opposite direction, I am scrolling through craigslist to find new furniture for my apartment. So, I guess my bases are covered either way. I basically need to have the apartment visitor-friendly so that when I detox from my movies, theater, concerts, movies, plays, stand-up comedy, movies, spoken word, movies, book readings, movies, etc. mindset, I have a place where I can invite friends over. Right now, the living room is a bit… spartan.

Actually, that is the most amazing thing about this change of life. I look around… and wonder, where the hell has my money gone? The apartment isn’t quite done. My wardrobe, well, anything lacking in that department is more connected to the body I don’t want to dress nicely, but still it is an expense I haven’t incurred. My passport isn’t stamped with all these exotic locales. And, on top of my inflated salary, I spent a lot of the past year paying off DEBT on top of everything else. I’m not saving now because I’m just finishing off the debt. But… I am nearly at a loss as to how this happened. Could I really have seen this many concerts, plays, movies, and everything else? It doesn’t seem possible.

I think this whole thing will be worthwhile just for the sake of reality, if nothing else. i know I have said things in the past like, “Yikes, I only have $300 and it’s five days to pay day,” and meant it. And, for the life of me, i can’t imagine why that was a problem. I used to withdraw $100 or $120 whenever i went to the ATM, now it’s $20 or 40. So, novel aside, this is a change that needed to occur.

I think a lot of my friends must have thought I was crazy. I think I was crazy. But it is all coming back to normal. Soon, I will get bills in the mail, pay them; see concert listings and think it is too pricy to go, not to mention I just saw them last tour; and restaurants with $24 entrees may seem WAY over the top, let alone going to the French Laundry for another meal anytime soon.

Bills. Aparment projects. Wine clubs. It’s mainly just little bullshit like this that consumes my time lately. But I am, admittedly, running out of stuff like this to do. Back to the book soon, so i just want to have all of this minutiae cleared up by then.

And, no, it isn’t procrastination this time. The book will be top focus next week. So, I have this week to mess around.

I am now on the new budget, although it isn’t entirely switched over to replicate my next life. I am still paying the rent from one paycheck. I need to start chopping up every paycheck, so that I have to save $460 from each pay to pay the rent, as opposed to living off of one paycheck and saving the other, because it does allow for more illegal dipping into checking.

Of course, the incentive for saving money is high. The quicker the money is saved, the quicker I leave my job.

There are a lot of options as far as what may or may not contribute financially to my leaving. I have a bunch of stock options that may or may not be worth anything, as our stock recently tanked. The stock is at $20.44 today, and I have options at $12, $18, and $28. the $12s don’t kick in until March, so I can’t trade any of those. The $18s are barely worth anything, so it’s a better gamble to wait, and the $28s… well, they will likely be sold to just offset any gains made on the other two. But who knows, I’ve got a few months yet.

The trip home went well, a lot of people are apprehensive and concerned about the move, but it was nearly universally supported. Some people mentioned that they aren’t used to hearing of someone plan changing their life and careers like this without getting laid off or something first, so it was interesting to watch. My one grandmother seemed to interpret my holiday letter to me being “mad at the world,” but that was an isolated interpretation, and one I wasn’t allowed to refute.

So, already started packing lunches, and have to keep remembering to mention wanting to leave this place, so that it doesn’t seem odd that I am not saying that anymore. I’m hoping to be gone by June.

Some Christmas gifts will certainly help in that regard. I got gift certificates for the local movie theater, vegan restaurant, and Amazon, to try and reduce my living expenses as much as possible. Skipping a lot of concerts, too. Only two on the horizon are Starsailor and Rufus Wainwright.

Only planned expenses are any incidentals to get my apartment updated. The living room needs some pieces, and I will be finishing off the kitchen, too. Only aesthetic makeovers, though. Nothing too radical, since I only rent.

Finally back online and posting… I had initially planned to post while I was home in Pennsylvania for three weeks, but the speed of my parents’ dial-up made that an unsavory notion. I did get them on a cable modem before I left, but at that point, I was in last-minute visit crunch mode.

Had a rather productive visit home. I brought my manic un-cluttering energy home and went through nearly all of the stuff in my closet, as well as the attic and basement. A lot of things went into the trash, a couple dozen items went on eBay, and two smaller boxes are on their way to San Francisco. Not sure why I don’t like having stuff “hanging over me” on the other coast, but now I don’t. Still going to be going through a lot of my books and I will be dumping stuff soon there, too.

Interesting digging through my collections of previous years. The River Phoenix posters, Star Trek memorabilia, and movie stuff was a bit overwhelming. One of the most-telling things I found were a lot of old books, many of which still had bookmarks in them… in the middles of the books. I’m not sure I like the telltale notion of being such a horrible reader in the past, although I am feeling its after-effects now, as I still try and catch up. Of course, the upside was that most of the bookmarks were in books I have no desire to read now anyway, so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered.

It is just a lot of reduction of material things, which seems to be something I’m aspiring to as I get older.

Being home also makes you question things. I didn’t go to New York City this visit, so it didn’t have any of the usual ‘I should move here’ vibes. But, you always wonder what your life would have been if you hadn’t left, or what it would be like if you moved back. But one didn’t happen, and one I’m not planning on, so I guess it ultimately doesn’t matter.

I guess I don’t really feel tied to my geography. San Francisco isn’t offering me incentive to stay, but there are a lot of good people here I like. Pennsylvania is kind of the same. Good friends and such there, but not sure I would move for that reason. Honestly, it often surprised me that I live in San Francisco, that I did get on a plane one day with a round-trip fare and never used the return flight on my itinerary.

This year should be marked by a lot of change. I certainly hope to complete the novel this year. As well as other things that I’m less likely to talk about on this site. But definitely a lot of change on the horizon.

Happy new year to everyone.