Picture yourself on a probe that has landed with creme brulee ground and tangerine skiiiiies

Picture yourself on a probe that has landed with creme brulee ground and tangerine skiiiiies

So I didn't get around to scanning those pictures today because I was extremely, extremely lazy today. For the time being, check out this article about the Titan moon landing. Titan's orange, if you were wondering, as clearly shown below. The article also makes Titan seem remarkably like a Beatles song.


The orange surface of Titan.

[UPDATE: I tried scanning those pictures earlier tonight, but I didn't have any kind of media to save them on. Apparently Kinko's doesn't want its customers to save anything--even temporarily so--on its harddrives. C'est la vie, I guess. I'll buy some disks at some point and get those pictures up.]

D

Operation P-Day: Part One

Operation P-Day: Part One

I forgot my camera at the apartment yesterday, so I don't have any pictures of my last day on McBride. I'll make it up to you guys by scanning in some pictures I have from a going away party we had for a McBride crewmember a month and a half ago. I also have a set of photobooth pictures of me and my friend Nikki from when we stepped into a random bar (with a photobooth)one night after getting lost looking for our friends. We both look--dare I say it?--pimp...

Look for that later this afternoon. Also stay tuned on Tuesday for reports on the wrap party from this coming Monday night. It's all of the cast and crew from all four McBride movies in cramped quarters with an open bar for five hours. God help us...God help us all.

D

T-Minus two days: picture day 2 of 3

T-Minus two days: picture day 2 of 3

Well, today's picture day is very much lackluster compared with yesterday's. You can certainly tell that I was relegated to the set for most of the day. Not a whole lot of stuff to shoot in just a single room when most of your friends are elsewhere. That and a lot of the pictures were a bit fuzzy, which I wasn't able to notice on the tiny camera viewscreen. They say the middle section of a trilogy is always the most depressing bit, and I guess it's true. Anyway, here goes.


Dane on his camera-mobile (some called it a dolly). He is truly master of his domain, for better or worse. Usually worse.


This is pretty much how Coach (aka Brian, but not to anyone on set)spends a good portion of the morning before the coffee kicks in. Sometimes you have to poke him. Poke him and run.


Larroquette and a bouquet of flowers. What a demure looking fellow he is.


Sitting and sitting. They're actually sitting in for the two actors. The gentleman on the left is Bill, Larroquette's professional stand-in. The young lady on the right is Susan, the 1st AD.


When we roll, however, we must leave the sitting to the professionals. The actress' name is Gigi.


Some move. Most watch. The way of the business.

Today was a short one, but we sure made it seem like a long time. What can I say? It's a gift. And tomorrow's the last of it, at least for a while. Then I'm back on the market. Hope I can pay next month's rent! HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!

I'm joking, but I'm not.

D

T-Minus three days: picture day 1 of 3

T-Minus three days: picture day 1 of 3

Hey guys. Nothing really happened on the set today, and here are some pictures to prove it.


This is just a picture I had on my camera that I hadn't posted. Oh my God! What's that behind me! (Not to worry. It's just a closet.)


Bob the grip. Bob the rockstar.


I'll kill you all someday! Hooray! (This is my friend, Angela.)


Angela and Bashir. This has to be my favorite picture of the bunch. I don't think there's any stimulus in the world that could make two humans react in this way simultaneously besides a pointed camera.


Here's Brookey and her c-stand. Note that there is a fine hunka man standing three feet away from her taking the picture, yet she still goes for the pole. How sad.


Brooke:You just open your mouth and kick!
Angela:Like this?
Brooke:Like this!


Bonni's actually a very happy person...


...see?


Larroquette has gotten at least one scarf knitted for him. I sit next to him and slowly freeze, merely the driver.


Me and an LA backdrop. I was really just trying to keep from falling asleep at this point.


End of the day. Finally.

I totally forgot to get a picture of myself in my cop garb today when I was being an extra. I'm really kicking myself now. I didn't even get to really see myself in it. Bummer.

Check back tomorrow for more exciting adventures! Maybe something interesting will happen tomorrow, but don't count on it!

D

[UPDATE: I just looked at my site meter and discovered that I almost got a hundred hits on this site today. That's about four times as many as normal. Who else is out there, I wonder? Looking...]

Early mornings and long days should be a crime

Early mornings and long days should be a crime

Got to be a cop again today. Being a background is a pretty fun exercise in acting, vanity and sadism. You get to do a alot of improv--very quiet improv--with other actors on camera, which is good practice. There are also the games that spring naturally from being in front of a camera and having to be as silent as possible. One game is to see how long you can stay in front of the lens of the camera even as it moves. Those who are the most vain and those that know how wide the lens is and, in turn, how much of the set the camera sees are at the greatest advantage in this game. The other game is to whisper absurdities to your fellow background artists in an attempt to make them laugh out loud during a take. For example, a file I was to hand off to another extra simply labelled "Smith File" started as a file for a man named Smith, but then it escalated to two, then to three men named Smith (two of whom he'd already dealt with). From there the envelope contained everything from vintage porn to a recipe for a thin pasta dish in a white wine sauce topped with chicken to an offer for a homemade candlelight dinner and a sensual, drawn hot bath. Clearly I was playing with a professional in that game, but I think I held my own. As a side note, we both won the screentime longevity prize on that shot.

Despite the games, today was a drudge. I couldn't even figure out why. The rain finally stopped. It wasn't an especially difficult shoot day. Bogus. It shoulda been butta.

Ah well. Tomorrow's another day. Tomorrow's another 4:30AM day. *Le sigh*

D

The End of Times, Part Two

The End of Times, Part Two


Yep. It's a big fucking boulder.

This is a picture of a 25-foot boulder blocking a road. That road is Topanga Canyon Road. That's the road I take to work every fucking day. Needless to say I took a circuitous route this morning.

Instead of being crushed by a boulder, John and I ended up being an hour and a half late for work because the 405 highway--arguably the most heavily trafficked highway (in many senses of the word) in Los Angeles--had its six lanes narrowed down to just one. I also saw a semi-truck back into the front of a pick-up because the driver had nodded off from the wait. Amazingly the pick-up owner was no more than a foot from the back of the semi no more than thirty seconds later. I no longer felt bad for the guy.

In fun news, I got to be an extra in McBride today. I played a uniformed cop in a police station. Coach, our second A.D., would walk over between takes and give me advice on how to get noticed better on screen. Lots of movement. Standing. Shuffling through files. Yes, it's exciting to be a modern cop what with all this sitting, standing and paper work. It was pretty cool.

Side note: my cop name tag was Gibson. Bashir--a fellow PA and a black dude--said I was Mel Gibson a la Lethal Weapon. I told him he could be Danny Glover (except I think I said he should be "mother fucking" Danny Glover). All we needed was a gratuitous car chase, and we'd have our own movie.

D

The End of Times

The End of Times

I spent the better part of today--and the past few days--getting completely soaked. I decided to walk around town today knowing that it was supposed to rain hard again today. It's amazing how many people you meet when you're forced to enter random places to shelter one's self. I got friendly with one particular gas station attendant when I stepped in for a moment that stretched to about 45 minutes while I waited out the storm.

In LA, when it rains--especially as it's been raining now--it's fucking Biblical. The city simply isn't equipped to deal with any kind of precipitation. I saw a guy get into a wreck the other day making a simple right turn...in no traffic. Sewers back up. Highways flood. People stay indoors. It's unbelieveable, and after six solid months of sunshine it feels like it's been raining for months.

I spent a good portion of today waiting for friends to arrive at a restaurant because they were stuck in rain-related traffic. Really this just meant I stared out the window at a Starbucks across the street for about an hour. As cool as rainy Sundays are in general, it's even cooler when you get to listen to your headphones, drink some coffee and people watch at the same time.

After the late lunch, we went to watch White Noise. It had one of the most ambiguous endings I've ever seen. It's one thing for a film to leave something open-ended, up to the viewer to choose his or her own ending. It's another for the climax and denouement to be a nonsensical non sequitur. Meh.

In other news, Jay-Z's The Black Album is awesome. Thought you might like to know.

D