Darrell Vickers: How I Got Really, Really Good Rolling Stones Tickets

Working in show business is like dating a girl that is clinically insane.  Sometimes it can be absolutely mind blowing and amazing and sometimes it can be like having your eyes eaten out by fire ants.  I shall now recount one such ocular bug buffet that would have given Leiningen himself, the cold shits.

The Beginning:

Andrew and I just been hired as co-executive producers on a so-so series about a genie (No, it wasn’t “I Dream of Jeannie” – I’m not that fucking old.).  These types of fictional endeavors are problematic from the get-go.  You have a mythical creature that can solve any problem by crossing his arms and nodding, so you spend 90% of your time trying to figure out the reason why he doesn’t.  On this show, that was the least of our worries.

Darrell Vickers: Duncing With the Stars

Having been employed in the entertainment industry since Netflix personally drove the actors to your house to perform your order, I have become friends with a small cadre of practicing thespians.  Additionally, having spent a regrettable amount of time wallowing in the fetid, festering spiritual cesspool that is children’s animation, I am acquainted with a number of talented individuals who make their living giving voice to artistic renderings of cute furry animals and intense do-gooders wearing capes.  For nigh on a decade now, these flexibly-larynxed entertainers have lamented their industry’s perplexing penchant for hiring celebrities.  In effect, they’re employing people with memorable faces to do voice work.  Why, that’s brilliant!  Talk about thinking outside the box.  Why pay dedicated professionals, who’ve spent a lifetime perfecting their craft, to weave their paralinguistic magic when you can pressgang some sitcom-star-of-the-week or pre-arrest cinematic idol to do it?   That’s like hiring the handsomest waiter at a restaurant to cook all the food.