Some days, when I'm wearing a red clerical shirt and a suit, driving down the street with a thirty-two foot ladder
tied to the roof of my car and a prominently marked crate of explosives in the back, I can't help but think to myself,
"hmmmm...you know, I really hope I don't get pulled over right now."
Oh, sure, I have all the appropriate paperwork and licenses from the BATF, but, still, I worry that someone might
get the wrong idea.
...even if I was very careful to have the legally required old red shirt tied to the end of the ladder.
Whenever I get moments of feeling self-conscious, I remind myself that everybody else is much too busy
feeling self-conscious themselves to even notice whatever I'm feeling self-conscious about, no matter
how absurd it might seem. Most of the time, I think people only notice you if you look like you're not
sure about what you're doing; as long as you seem confident (or are at least carrying a clipboard), you
can get away with anything and nobody will notice at all.
Except maybe the time I was standing in the middle of a busy street, carefully placing candy corn on
the median. Some of the drivers did notice that, but that's probably because I didn't have a clipboard
with me at the time.
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(this is not me) |
At one point, after I'd gotten to the day's shooting location and whited out one of my eyes, I ended up making
a quick run to a nearby fast-food joint with Justin "Lucky" McQueede. While I was waiting for him to re-emerge
from said joint, an enthusiastic eight-year-old spotted the ladder (still attached to the top of the car) and started
jumping up and down, pointing it out to her mommy. I'm guessing she was saying something like, "look, Mommy!
A big ladder!"
Either that, or, "Mommy, Mommy! Do you think that the imposition of significant import tariffs on Korean-made
dynamic memory chips could have a negative impact on manufacturers of budget videocards!" I'm not very good
at reading lips when someone's jumping up and down like that.
Naturally, I thought, "aww...a cute kid. Why not scar her emotionally for life?" So I took off my sunglasses and
waved back, but she didn't notice. At least I think she enjoyed the ladder. Hard to compete with something that's
thirty-two feet long.
(Sara Salazar escapes unscathed ...or so she thinks....) |
Sara had to work extra hard today; she was in almost every scene. I was in only a couple of
setups and those ended up being moved to the very end of the shoot, so my job consisted
mostly of standing around in an unventilated 100-degree warehouse wearing a suit while
continuously being ready to be on camera and not look like I'd been standing around in a
100-degree unventilated warehouse wearing a suit all day.
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And then Kurt Bauman's chest exploded.
On most days, this would probably be a bad thing. In fact, as I understand it, a lot of people
don't like it when that happens.
In this case, it was all part of the plan...except that the output reached a little farther than expected.
And I happened to be standing off-camera, ready for my first scene which was about to be shot, things
were running behind schedule, and I end up getting sprayed head-to-toe with stage blood.
Ooops. So much for my day-long effort to remain in ready-to-be-shot form despite the heat.
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(making sure we see eye-to-eye) |
But after a bit of frenzied running around to locate suitable cleaning supplies and get myself unbloodied,
at least everything else went off without a hitch, even if we were pushing the shots to make time. All
ended well...except for the terrible fate that the heroes were facing at the end, but, then, you have to
expect that sort of thing.