Happy Jenday, everybody, although a bit late I admit...
Been a while. Lot going on. The hotel shoot you guys have heard so much about was pretty cool. Well, more accurately, it was very interesting. It was actually quite warm. Without giving away any spoilers I'll just say that some of our costumes well not well ventilated. It was pretty creepy being in a "real" haunted hotel. The bartender there told us the following story:
On several occasions male patrons of the hotel would go up to their room on the Fourth Floor: room 408 or 407. You see, they used to be all one room, but some time back they made it two rooms in an effort to stave off "occurrences". Well, these guests would go up to their room and walk down the short hallway into the bedroom area. Here they would find a woman with a look of absolute scorn and hatred on her face. The men would generally immediately apologize and back out of the room. They would go down to the concierge and complain that there was already somebody in the room. The concierge would claim that they certainly had nobody else checked into the room. And when the guest would go back up...there would be nobody there.
It was after hearing this story that solo sojourns into the room became less frequent.
But the building was pretty neat, if somewhat antiquated. The floor squeaked in certain places and there was this really annoying high pitched squeal that went off whenever you crossed the threshold of the elevator doorway...which was really bad when we tried to shoot in the elevator and kept setting the sensor off. And there were faces everywhere: busts of smiling women that made you feel like any moment they were going to turn their heads and wink at you.
We showed up around 8 and got pretty much immediately to work. To my surprised delight, everything went pretty smoothly. There were no forgotten P2 cards or XLR cables, no cops showing up to tell us we couldn't shoot there without a permit, and most importantly: free ghosts no ghosts. We shot until 5:30am, at which point I was surprised to find myself not nearly as tired as I should have been. I guess the energy drinks really did work. Which sucked because when I got home it took me two hours to fall asleep.
My manager had graciously allowed me to come in late to work, but I still only got about 3 hours of sleep.
And this happened 2 Tuesdays in a row. For me. For Yuri, Justin, Dashiel, Dustin, and usually Hilary, they do this all the time.
Anyway, you'll see how worth it it was soon enough.
This past weekend I went down to San Diego for my friend's wedding. First off, has anybody flown on Virgin Airline lately? They have tvs in the back of every seat so you can watch tv, watch movies, play games, chat, order stuff, order food, order Jack Daniels on the rocks which they will bring right to your seat. And the arm of your chair flips open and you can pull a remote control/text pad/game controller thingie out of. I was impressed.
The wedding was held outdoors on a grassy embankment near a marina. The groom and all the groomsmen were wearing kilts, which was pretty friggin awesome. To be part of the spirit of things, I wore mine too because hey! any excuse to wear a kilt. The fun all started when two very small and very adorable little flower girls made it halfway down the isle...and then bolted back the other way. It was a nice short ceremony made slightly less short by the most rambling priest I have ever seen. I'm an ordained minister (Thanks Universal Life Church!) and I've done a few weddings in my time. You don't stand up there and babble all day. You get to the point, you get a couple of silly kids hitched up, and then you book it to the reception where somebody else has paid for the booze. And there was lots of laughter and merriment and the flexing of the knees and the flying of the kilts (that's dancing). All in all a text book wedding. I spent most of the rest of the day in the pool. My friend has a saline pool, which means instead of water it uses a sodium compound that is pretty much like swimming in tears. Which means no eye irritation, which means I could do my impression of a spawning dolphin all day long.
I hate coming back from vacation. So, when I got dropped off at the airport on Sunday, I was wearing a shirt that reads "Tomorrow's gonna suck." You can order them at cafepress.com. Almost every airport personnel I had to interact with to get to my plane agreed that yes, tomorrow probably was going to suck. One woman offered to trade me shirts, but the fake rhinestone really didn't go with my shoes. And I love it when the pilot shows a little personality, a little humanity. We are trusting this guy with our lives and it's nice to know that it's somebody I would want to put my trust in. Before we left the gate the intercom came on and the pilot said "Thank you and Welcome about Flight 878 with non-stop service to Chicago." Several people actually gasped. Even I was started because I hadn't really been paying attention and was reading my book. "Now that I've got everybody's attention," he carried on, "just kidding." We all had a good chuckle, I ordered my JD and the rest of the flight went smoothly. I happened to be in one of the emergency exit seats which has tons of leg room, which is nice for a certain 6'1" tall individual who usually spends his flights with his knees in somebody's back.
And then last night Justin calls me up and asks me if I have any renaissance style clothing. Silly Justin, he should know better than to ask me questions like that. He should have just jumped right to "Can we borrow some of your ren gear." So the lads came over (but forgot my hat) and borrowed some of my stuff for a shoot. And I know you might be thinking "Wait...why isn't Jennifer wearing the silly costume?" Well, as a wise man once said "sometimes you get the bar, and sometimes, well...the bar, he gets you." So you can start placing bets on who will be wearing a frilly shirt and breeches. And I guess I do this kind of thing too often because the lads started asking me questions about period fashions and I was able to answer them...correctly. Which means I think we can add dramaturge (or at least assistant costumer) to my titles for this show.
I only say that because I often feel that I don't always carry as much weight as the other guys around here and more titles means I'm contributing something. Doesn't it?