My 2nd appearance on CBC Radio is telling a story about a fork!

In this episode of the CBC radio show GO! that I attended the live taping of, the host Brent Bambury was going through his shoeboxes of memorabilia and telling the "true" stories behind each item. To help him de-clutter, he asked some special guests (like Kids In The Hall's Scott Thompson) to come up with their own theory of why Brent had that item, and if the audience liked the "made-up" story better Brent had to get rid of the item. I was pulled from the audience to be the first person to make up a story (subsequent story-tellers had written-up their stories beforehand). As you can tell from Brent's reaction, the audience was supposed to like his story better and he was supposed to keep his fork. But he hadn't counted on the hilariousness that is Josh Rachlis. As my Dad eloquently put it: "I'm so proud of you. You won a fixed contest."

Vote for my eco hip hop video in the Green Web Awards!

You know how I give you so much pleasure with these extremely entertaining blog posts? (Just go with me here for a second.) Well, it's time for you to give back.

I've just discovered through my Google Alert for "An Inconvenient Proposal" that the esteemed panel of international judges for the second annual Green Web Awards has short-listed my eco hip hip marriage proposal music video. (Thank goodness for Google Alerts, is all I can say. Otherwise I'd never know I was doing sort of okay at anything at all.)

Now the judging has been turned over to the public. So here's what I need you to do, public. Go to the "Judges short-list" page here. Type in your name. Scroll down to the "Social Media Hero" category. Select "An Inconvenient Proposal: A love song for Laurie David." Then, select and copy the YouTube address that's right under the title. Scroll down to the bottom and paste the address into the "Judges Award: Best of the Best" category.

And voila! You have my everlasting gratitude. I don't know what prize I'd win from this contest. I just know that I haven't won anything since winning "Most Improved Water-Skiier" at B'Nai Brith summer camp when I was 12, and I'd really like to win something again.

I'm a finalist in the Script Showcase Screenwriting Competition!

This Spring, I finished the first draft of my first feature film screenplay. As with all first drafts of a feature, it needs to be worked on and revised and have more drafts written. However, I was so giddy to have finished 120 pages of SOMETHING, I went rogue and entered it into some L.A.-based screenplay contest I'd seen listed at MovieBytes.com. And then I promptly forgot about it. But then this morning, in my daily "Google Alert" for "Josh Rachlis" (if that makes me vain, then I don't want to be, um, non-vain), amongst the usual hits for my own YouTube page and my own Tweets, I noticed a link to something about the finalists for The Script Showcase Screenwriting Competition. I followed it to the Contest Placings page to discover that, unbeknownst to me, I'd made the Quarter Finals, then the Semi-Finals, and I'm now in the top 8 Finalists remaining. Meaning I've already won some prizes. And, according to the rules, it sounds pretty hard to get there:

Judging will be conducted in two separate elimination rounds, plus a Quarter Final, a Semi Final and a Final round. The submissions receiving the top two hundred (200) scores will proceed to the second elimination round and scored based upon the same judging criteria as round one.
Thirty two (32) Quarter Finalists will be chosen from the second elimination round.
Sixteen (16) Semi Finalists will be chosen from the Quarter Finalists.
Eight (8) Finalists will be chosen from the Semi Finalists.
Three (3) Winners will be chosen from the Finalists.

The top 3 will be announced on December 15th, but I thought I'd blog about it now while there's still something to celebrate. So... Woo hoo. (That was me celebrating.)

Anyway, if you're a Hollywood producer, I'd be happy to email you the script. And if you're in the Mafia, I'd be happy if you arranged "accidents" for the 7 other top screenwriters. Ha ha, just kidding! Unless you really are in the Mafia. In which case, I'm totally serious.

Acting in a mall radio ad!

Returning in my 3rd radio ad for an awesome shopping facility, it's me as the shopping expert who's BFF's with a couple of women. Which is a true testament to my incredible acting skills. Because in real life, of course, no woman will even stand near me, much less discuss their "favourite things" with me. (Oh, and further evidence of my acting genius is that this spot ends with me just like the last one did. I actually ad-libbed that line in the last spot and the client liked it so much they put it in this script so that it's my catch-phrase. That's right, I have a catch-phrase!)

My 1st appearance on CBC Radio is as a perverted wine taster!

On Oct. 17, 2009, I attended the live taping of the CBC Radio show called GO! and was asked if I would go up and try the wine that the guests and host were trying. The host did a funny bit where he described the taste of the wine as, among other things, a "noble savage." Then it was my turn. Naturally, I managed to turn an innocuous 10-second wine review on Canada's national public radio station into an uncomfortably sexual situation.