The bug that bit Mike St. James

It all began when we were living in steamy Texas. (And we'll have to stop right there because I wouldn't want you to think that we were in some glamorous, sultry, sexy New Orleans type of hot, steamy south. Oh no. We were in roast you where you stand/only reptiles can enjoy this type heat.)

MSJ woke up one morning and thought, I want to be an actor. It was just that simple. Personally I think he was worked up over You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks looked like he was having so much fun - how hard could it be, right? Clearly MSJ was overlooking Castaway and forgetting that Hanks started his career in some dowdy housedress that wouldn't have looked good on anyone. Soooo, MSJ got a headshot and began registering his name with various agencies to do extra work. We are both sincere believers in destiny and we wanted to test the fates. At the time we would have called it putting a fleece before the Lord. MSJ came up with the test: he needed $80 to enroll in some national registry of extras, so if God provided the $80 through some miraculous means, that would surely mean he was destined to be an actor.

Wouldn't you know it, MSJ's mother (who always falls upwards) sent us a check for $80 "just for the heck of it." And there you have it. Kismet.

The next thing we knew, MSJ was playing the lineless role of "Family Member" in Ian Blackwell and the Bicycle Chain Occurrence, a local independent film. That was when the acting bug bit him. A year later we were living in Wilmington, MSJ had an acting coach, and he had a whole list of headshots to choose from. But it started with Ian Blackwell, a name that will always make us smile. For me it marks the first step on the road that led us to sultry, steamy, ever-so-sexy antebellum Wilmington, a place where I can work my Blanche DuBois.

So where are we headed and why are we in this handbasket?

Let's just be up front with each other, shall we? I'm a horrible blogger. I don't have the time or the energy or the nebulous quality of deliciously humorous snark that marks the best of bloggers. Acerbic I can do, but mirthful? Not really.

I find myself in this special little corner of cyberspace because MSJ's amiable and tolerant Cousin M talked me into it. She, of course, is a charming blogger. She's faithful and interesting and always enjoyable. I feel like the yang to her happy yin but at least we're balanced. What we need, she pointed out, is a place to see of all of Mike St. James' headshots, screenshots, and latest roles - all in one package. That would certainly be easier than our current method of excessive emails forwarded around to sundry family & friends with wild attempts to answer the same question 2 or 9 times and not get wires crossed.

But then MSJ and I got thinking... he's just starting out, really. He's just had a handful of roles and few of those have been lucrative. Wouldn't it be nice to look back someday from the heights and see just where we were, what we were thinking, which hills seemed like mountains? These small victories amuse the hell out of us now, but will it always be so? It might be nice to remember a "simpler" time when being picked as an extra in the local horror flick enraptured us. And that brings us to this blog: a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone blog. A source of information and an archive of personal history (that will only fascinate MSJ & I, and if we're really lucky, our kids). When all is said and done, I hope I enjoy it as much as you will. *wink*