In the early 2010s, Cape Girardeau, MO was chosen as a location for some of the filming of Gone Girl. I lived there and it was the talk of the town. People were running into Ben Affleck at the local Andy’s and shit.

Meanwhile they put out a casting call for extras. I didn’t care about it but of course my girlfriend and her cousin went psycho about it and signed us up. We waited in line with at least a thousand other people only to finally get up there, and all they did was take a headshot and send us on our way. The girls were all disappointed that there wasn’t anything else to it while I the introvert just laughed about it.

Until I was the one they called back. Not only that, but it turns out they picked me to be a stand-in for Boyd Holbrook. I spent a week hanging out on David Fincher’s set, occasionally doing work while trying to avoid getting in trouble for doing things like accidentally sitting in Rosamund Pike’s chair. Then one of the assistant directors’ mother died and he had to leave, so they “promoted” me to production assistant. At one point I was sent to look for and found David Fincher’s missing iPhone.

Fucking surreal man. But I’ve got the 20th Century Fox W-2s to prove it.

Not a movie, but there was a period of time when my parents’ house had them living upstairs, my older brother, his wife, and their young son living in the converted basement, and me temporarily staying in a guest bedroom after I had just gotten out of the Army. And we all worked at the family pizza restaurant together.

It was the perfect TGIF sitcom scenario.

Had a shotgun put to my head and marched into a house of gang members because I dared to try to pick my sister up from a party. Got yelled at and threatened, and left without her.

Came back a little while later to try once more and found ems/police/fire all over the place. That same person with the same shotgun blew someone elses head off after I left.

I had a friend with me, we elected not to stop the second time. A day later the police questioned us, we were subpoenaed to testify, and both got threatened by gang members for years.

Good times.

I was walking through the city, watched as a man in a suit in front of me (I was walking behind him for a couple of blocks) picked up a briefcase beside a newsstand and got in the passenger seat of a waiting black car which drove off.

I’m in a spy movie, I guess.

On the lunch long time ago, I was complaining to my colleagues about surprisingly expensive pizza: “20 euros for the pizza! In some countries you would get a blowjob for that kind of money!” Few minutes later, another colleague joined us and I immediately told him: “This is 20 euro pizza!”. He answered: “What?? Did you get a blow job with it?” One female colleague noted: “I see you both visit similar kind of … restaurants”.

Once i had a bike accident. The car was parked and the driver opened the door milliseconds before i drove by.

The bike smashed into his door and i went flying onto the other lane, where luckily no cars were driving at the time.

The movie like thing was that i landed rolling a few times and ended up on my feet without any injury or whatsoever. The bike was trashed, as was the car’s door. The driver was also pretty shocked about what happened. I was just wondering why nothing happened to me.

Ok, i was young ( 26 ) and I’m sure my body wouldn’t be so lucky nowadays.

Standing in a convenience store when a car comes crashing through the front, and broken glass flies all around all the customers including me. None of us got hurt, but it was scary AF. Car was being driven by an elderly person who confused the brake pedal with the gas pedal.

I had sex once.

I saw a lady slip on a banana peel irl outside of the Disney store in Dublin, Ireland. I didn’t even know it was possible. I felt really bad bc I couldn’t go help her up because I was laughing so hard and had to go into the Disney store so it wouldn’t look like I was laughing at her. I was just more shocked that it actually happened.

About 15 years ago I was giving a presentation at a technical conference. This was me giving a presentation in front of a room full of about 50 other engineers. At this point in my career this was still pretty new to me, so I was nervous. It was getting time for my presentation and I needed to do a last minute nervous pee before I did my presentation.

I went to the bathroom, peed in a urinal, and then went to wash my hands. I pushed down the bathroom faucet and it exploded sending up a geyser of water about air a foot or two into the air. Now had I really been on a TV show, my pants would have been soaked in the crotch area, but luckily in real life I stepped back and didn’t get wet. However, this was the perfect setup for a young nervous engineer giving a technical presentation to be thoroughly embarrassed. Luckily I’m either not on a TV show, or I’m not the main character.

Maybe like 20 years ago, my partner and I were at a couple-friends’ apartment on a hot sweaty summer day. The four of us sitting in a small circle on the hardwood living room floor, smoking a bowl… Nothing but the sound of the flicking lighter, and the squeaky hum of the ceiling fan providing us with some margin of relief from the heat. Ahh…

Then boom. The ceiling fan’s loose screw squeaked its last squeak and the whole fixture fell, heavy-ass motor assembly and all, exactly in the middle of our circle. One of the wooden blades nicked my friend on the way down for a bloody eyebrow. But the heavy middle part, which could’ve killed any of us, landed right in the middle of our little arms-length bowl circle. This wasn’t one of those skinny modern fans you install by yourself… The thing was freakin’ heavy.

“Whoa.”

Once I worked a double with a coworker I had a small crush on. Towards the end of the shift, my sister called me. She was staying in a rural area on the other side of the state. She had started to drive home, and something had popped her tire. She had no spare, and no where was open… and she had an international flight in the morning. I told her, yup yup, I’ll go get her.

As soon as I got off my call, my co worker insisted that she go with me. “You’re going to need a co pilot.” After some back and forth, somehow we ended up taking her car even. That was at 8pm. It was really nice at first. I learned a lot about her. She told me about her fiance, and her upbringing in the south. We got to our destination at midnight, and both of us were bushed. We asked my sister if she could take the wheel for the way home. We both fell asleep.

My sister hit a deer at around 2am. We were still about 90 min from my car. Who do you call at 2am to drive that far to turn around and drive all the way back? I started making calls. We were dropped off at this truck stop; I am trying to be strong for these ladies; one of whom just had her car totaled and one of whom is my literal baby sister. One of my friends made the drive; and Ive got stories about her (which also might just be movie esqe). In any case, I took my co worker home, and then handed my keys to my sister gingerly, because she had some stuff to do at her house before my dad took her to the air port. She made her flight with 20 minutes to spare, at 830 am. My car was the first one she left in working order that night.

I spent the next month helping my coworker get around while my sister was abroad. Didn’t get the girl, but that’s the story of my life. This had stakes, and acts, and a second act turn!

My first kiss was in the rain.

Jumping my bike off curb cuts and a garage exploded behind me. I was like 9 or 10.

We snatched a few Neighborhood Crime Watch signs from our rural neighborhood.

If anyone happens to have a recording from 1998 of when the Daily Show came out to rural PA and interviewed the state troopers and crime watch committee about it, we’ve been trying to find that recording for years. It was definitely during the Craig Kilborn years and I believe Steve Colbert was the field reporter who did the segment, but I’m not sure, because all those Daily show guys looked the same to me back before they got famous.

Jay Leno also did a Headlines bit on it, but that’s not nearly as fun.