thanks for the help.
i had done something similar to the duplicating and null suggestion you gave for an earlier project a few months back when i was stuck using AE 6.5 For some reason decided not to do it that way for this project. dunno why. i guess i thought that the ShapeExtruder would have worked.
i was quickly running short on time so the solution i came up with an ran with was to render rbg & alpha, the spinning texts with motion blur and ShapeEtxruder. minus the white solid, then duplicated the rendered composition and gaussian blurred it and squished it to make it the shadow. that worked rather well.
i greatly appreciate your time, suggestion, and help on my issue.
Jon Whaley
Graphic Artist