Brian Bentley

A light weekend as we start winding down the Sunday classes…

Saturday night I had dinner with Todd and we talked about the twins impending arrival amongst other topics. I love getting the time to talk with him because he’s extremely intelligent and it’s always a great conversation. Kudos to Todd for his choice of Ribs USA for dinner.

Sunday’s class was spent tightening and finalizing the 2 songs, rehearsing our dancing, and finalizing sketches. It also included me watching football scores and finally winning a fantasy football game.

We had the last Sunday night hour long preview show. We ran both of our songs and they were probably at 90%, but got a good review from Michael Pollack who has seen a lot of these things so his input is really inspiring.

Today was the standard flight home from Burbank, ho hum. I went over 100,000 miles with this trip and did it in just under a calendar year of traveling. No, I did not receive a medal or a cookie.

Next week is my last Sunday. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.

Miles Traveled: 2,470
Total Miles: 100,950

Melinda’s shower was Saturday and it was very nice. Thanks to Lisa for her hard work, I appreciate it. (Don’t forget my JL stuff). I stopped by for a couple minutes at the start and got to see some familiar faces and some old faces, especially Melinda’s friend from college, Jena. I had to buy paint for the nursery and run some other errands during the shower so I cut out. One of the things I had to do was go over two sketches for class with Tyler and Ellen by phone. I thought I’d try to multitask and run lines while buying paint, but apparently that was a strange idea as I got several strange looks from the guy at the Home Depot paint counter who overheard me. After Home Depot, I decided to run over to the Apple Store to look at the new iPod nanos and was helped by Reggie who, along with his wife was, in our C-Section class last week. They are expecting a little girl and their C-section is scheduled for November 2. Reggie is such an excellent salesman that I bought an iPhone. Ok, it’s not like he had to twist my arm.

Continue reading →

Note: The week number in titles of my travelogues are about my Second City travels, not the twins. The twins are roughly 6 weeks behind me.

Friday brought the inevitable – cleaning out the room that is the soon to be nursery. I couldn’t believe it took that long to empty a small closet, but it did. Thanks to JC for coming over to help move some of the furniture out of the room, too.

Saturday afternoon was pretty uneventful. We gave away our daybed and hung out around the house. The flight out was nice and allowed me to finalizing prep for my dinner and script pitch to my friends Kristin and Steve. I started working on a script idea a couple of weeks ago as an exercise for myself with Steve in mind as the lead. Over some very good sushi in Venice, I made my pitch that was very well received and Steve liked my attention to detail and asked to see the script as soon as it is completed. What does this mean? Right now, not much other than Todd and I need to get rolling. Todd is an excellent writer and when I had the idea I took it to him for his input and he’s been very helpful in the pitch and outline process.

Continue reading →

Friday, my babies mama went to see her doctor for a headache that wouldn’t go away. Her doctor sent her to labor and delivery for her high blood pressure to be monitored. Around midnight, Dr. Jacobs ended up deciding to hold her overnight to give her shots every hour to try and curb what was determined to be pre-term labor. Melinda has her account up over at BentleyTwinfo.com

After a very late night Friday trying to get a majority of the stuff accomplished I had on the list for Saturday, I was up early to get the pups to the Doggie Zen Den for a playday and then I was off to the hospital. I brought Melinda breakfast and then she went right to sleep. She was off the every hour shot schedule and had almost no sleep. She responded well to the meds and we were eventually sent home from the hospital around 2:00.

I almost didn’t make the trip this week since I didn’t know what kind of shape she would be in, or if she could be left alone for any period of time. We spoke to Dr. Jacobs again and she said the meds didn’t have any side effects and as long as someone lived nearby, I should go ahead and go on the trip. Fortunately, my mom lives close by, and with Melinda’s urging, I finally decided I would go. By this time, it’s 3:00 and I’m faced with doing about 4 hours stuff in a 2 hour window before heading to the airport at 5:00. I got home and packed at 4:55. No problem, right? Now, logic should dictate to you when I lead with a “nothing could go wrong” question, you know something goes wrong. In this case, it was a 3 lane clogging traffic accident at the 121/114 interchange. That little 15 minute, 900 yard debacle almost made me miss my flight, but I had already checked in online so I wasn’t worried about missing the flight.

Continue reading →

This weekend started with my Fantasy Football draft at 9:00 am in Denton. I had the #1 pick, so I took LT. It’s always good to see everyone and the season starts in 2 weeks. After the draft, we had a quick lunch at Hooter’s in Denton then I had to rush to Carrollton for a North Texas Honda spec commercial at 1:00. I was planning on going straight to the airport for a 3:25 flight, but unbeknownst to me, I was stationed in a sand trap for an hour with 2 reflectors on me wearing a golf shirt and cargo pants – ugh. Once the shoot was over I was drenched and had to go home to shower so for the 2nd consecutive week, I moved my flight and left out at 7:00. I did get to some time to hang out with my driver, who drove me to the airport. I decided to upgrade to first class so I could eat on the flight and I also finished Jay Mohr’s book.

Continue reading →

Hurricane activity in the Gulf has sprung bad weather on the Metroplex and this weekend started off with the threat of some severe storms. That’s fine, I’m used to it, but I had a print shoot scheduled for Dick’s Sporting Goods downtown on the top of a parking garage. I had was scheduled to shoot from 3:00-8:00, but had a 4:00 flight out to LA. I hadn’t changed my flight yet just in case the storms rolled through and washed out the shoot. Lucky for me, the clouds broke around 2:00 and on the way downtown I moved my flight to head out at 10:30 pm.

Continue reading →

This week’s travel started just like last week’s, through Austin again. Upon arrival in LA, I headed straight to Sherman Oaks for a lunch meeting with Paul Ryan. I met Paul a couple of years ago at a workshop and we’ve stayed in touch since. I’m going to help him with a redesign of his website and he’s been very helpful with advice and contacts for me. Paul’s new book, “The Art of Comedy” is available on Amazon.

Continue reading →

What started over a year ago last July is now heading into the home stretch. The final 12 weeks of The Second City Conservatory started this weekend and it started Saturday with this note on my suitcase:

Dearest Actor,

When I learned that you’re going to be taking the red eye back from Level 5 every Sunday night, I became concerned about the demands on my job as your driver. It is with a heavy heart that I must resign from my position as Actor’s Driver. I have enjoyed my time as your transportation consultant. If I could be so bold as to make a recommendation for the filling of this position, I would suggest that you drive yourself to the airport from now on and pay the necessary parking expenses. I hope this will not affect my current standing as employee of the month.

-MB

PS: I’m 6 months pregnant.

PPS: It’s twins.

Continue reading →

I decided for this week’s trip to take Southwest to LA, and thanks to the genius Wright Amendment here in Dallas, I had to go through San Antonio. As luck would have it, San Antonio was experiencing severe thunderstorms and flooding so I got to land and take off in that weather. Thank you, Congressman Wright.

Continue reading →

Saturday night was spent playing a “friendly” game of poker with my friends Drew and his wife heather, Jim, Esteban, Josh, and Drew’s neighbor, Jerry. I was the big winner of the evening and we all decided that we should make this a bi-weekly event. I always love getting to see those guys individually, but to get to spend the evening with them all, and win some money, is a treat.

You know what’s nice about going to bed at 1:30 and getting up at 7:00? No, really, what’s the good thing about doing that? It sucks. Especially with today being the 3rd straight Sunday turnaround, ugh. I can tell you being so tired makes the 3 hour flight go by in wink, and by “wink” I mean an extended wink known as sleeping.

Continue reading →

This weekend was low stress, but high creativity. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon running errands with my driver in the afternoon and enjoying the rare sunshine after several straight days of Noah’s Ark type rain.

The evening was saved for the Dallas Desperados arena football playoff game against the Columbus Destroyers. Let me set it up for you: Dallas was the #1 seed with a league record 15 wins (with only 1 loss) and undefeated at home. Columbus was the #6 seed and limped into the playoffs with a losing record of 7-9. The Desperados were up by 10 at the half, but 2 kickoffs off the goal posts recovered for Columbus touchdowns in the first 90 seconds of the second half and the Desperados were playing catch-up and they never were able to regain the lead, and just like the Mavericks, the Desperados fall in the first round. Brutal.

Continue reading →

(I thought I had published this last week, sorry it’s a week late.)

Friday, my driver took us to Austin with my mom, sister and grandmother. We were on our way down for her cousin Jim’s wedding and my mom and sister were going to catch up with an old friend. We had a short stop in Waco to drop my grandmother off with my Aunt then it was on to Austin where we would drop off drop off my mom and sister.

I had scheduled an agent meeting in Austin and was told to arrive “by 3:00″, and thanks to traffic through downtown, I arrived at “2:54″. Fortunately for me they understood the traffic issue and had a cancellation on their end so “by 3:00″ turned into “by 3:30″. The meeting went well, so we’ll see what happens.

From the meeting, we headed downtown to the rehearsal then to North Austin for dinner. Of course, I left stuffed. We spent the night with my driver’s mom.

Continue reading →