The Limitless Litany of Complaints, just passed a Backie in the hall:

"We were left out in the rain."

Later, I heard this one: "What non-union has the cahonies to argue for six more bucks?"

Apparently the hero telling the story did.

Or: "State labor laws totallly back me up."

Of course, when I had a meltdown for the show Sheckey, well it was different. Uh huh, sure. When confronted with the brisk and exacting wardrobe specifications for the show I railed against all of humanity's crimes. As it turned out, they only needed my pants, and I was able to change off set in a shirt they gave me, before camera rolled, and tossed my shirt perfectly to my own seat in the bleachers. Felt live Favre, the scrum clutching me I still fling it, up and over the linebackers it goes, spiraled to the streaking split end for the touchdown.

Meanwhile ill-tempered extra's continued to moan about various injustices. This show Shecky is apparently not long for this world. It's cute enuff, has the Arknasas thing down, nice specific detail that feels real, but it reeks of its forebearers. Sitcoms have set in, like too much candy, and our stomachs grumble at the form. Say a word over and over and you have the metaphor for sitcoms losing their meaning. They all feel even moreso like an exercise in commerce, rather than art. Please watch this show so we can all buy houses and sell you shit. Not, please watch this show because I have something to say to the world.

"It's weird, we may not be working next week," the craft services lady said. They didn't bother to feed anybody at lunch, this feels like the "Do NOT recistate" order has been posted to the bed of this patient. The sitcom parents were giving long hugs to their sit-com kids, I'm sure losing your sitcom family is painful in weird ways.

Got to chat with the classic songwriter Sammy Mack. he's playing the dad, and he's still funny. Looks great for being a 70s TV star. Had his own show: The Sammy Mack show. Wrote songs for Elvis, which I had forgotten until a black lighting guy came up and complimented him on his personal fav: "The Projects." I asked Sammy Mack if he desired a Rick Rubin revival for his musical career, and he said you have to be a legend like Johnny Cash. Also didn't care for any of the Cash/Rubin stuff, he liked the good old chugga-chugga Cash.

I got a script today, the first time for this courtesy. We are playing a large family at T-giving, an unwanted motley crew that invites itself. Have to make precise movements that hinge on us hearing the lines. This appears to be too much for one particular stupid Backie. I have to cue him EVERY time to move. He looks like a woof-woof character in a cartoon, doggy dumb face. The kind of face disney animators would use to animate an animal.

One of the sight gags to our Thanksgiving Day Meal is this Big Fat Pig. This extra has a horrifying, bitter look on his face, looks like he wants to take a bite outta the world. He's a fallen Chris Farley, the Judas to Farley's Christ. He demanded movement of all bodies when he thundered through. Meanwhile another extra sez he speaks seven languages. Other's appear to be on seven crack pipes. Nobody every socialized them, what is appropriate, how to communite, how to LISTEN. They shuffle around like the mentally ill at an institution, brains lathered in meds ... despite the ADs repeated please for alacrity. He actually said the word "alacrity."

Sitcoms seldom use extras, he's got a mob on his hands today. Extras want something for nothing, and get indignent when you ask them to be much more than an animated chair. Cognitive decision-making? They might have to call a union rep. Hanging out with extras reminds me of a great line in an alkie-haul warning film we watched in High School: you will find yourself continually lowering your peer group to continue hard drinking over your life-time.

The lead actress of Shecky was a chubby girl (by Hollywood standards. anywhere else she would be normal). She was the opposite of a snooty review I pulled off the internet about the show. Eminient TV critic who has grown lazy, hitting a cut & paste function to write his sitcom reviews, dreaming of reviewing ballet for a living.

Shecky, the star of the show is blowing it in my mind. If he is single, he should be booking as many hot extras as possible, and then invite them over to his house for a pool party. It really is amazing that you can stock the pond with hot girls just from the extra rolls.

I noticed the director had "TV Show Parking." After a long shoot on Monday, the rest of us trudged out in the rain to our cars, but his car was parked at the door to the sound stage. My friends coined the phrase to reflect a great parking spot next to where you want to go, the kind that people always get on TV, the dashing star pulls up in convertible, parks right next to where he needs to go, and then hops outta the car. This director looked like Chris Penn, he felt like kindofa hack, but a competent hack.

All the stars would speak to the extras. I don't know if this happened because they were humbled by their imminient cancellation, but it made for a pleasant work environment. I was worried that given this heady freedom, some extra would blow it for all of us, but people generally behaved. I've heard on Tom Cruise sets you are off the set if you are simply caught LOOKING at him.

We had four extras on the show who had won a contest. They won a contest to do what we do for a "living." They were shepparded about by some sort of network publicist, girl friday. Teeny lil' thing with great big plasticine boobies. Fake rack rocks in her body. I waited until she was in the restroom to talk to the real Arkansas folks. They said she was a horrid driver, and they were all terrified for their lives anytime she was behind the wheel. They felt the show was fairly broad, not really reflective of Arkansas, but their pretty use to show biz peeps coming to the south and fucking it up by this point in their lives.

The woof-woof dirt dumb backie who I had to cue everytime told me he's been doing this for EIGHTEEN years. I'll kill another convict in the yard and hope for the death penalty before I get that far in. He claims he can't find another job. That's a legitimate claim given his listening skills and intelligence. He obcesses about lunch, pay, time. When I look at his incredibly blank face I see a LED readout keeping track of time, meals, grievences, etc.

I have to pretend to converse with this cretin, which is another oddity in extra land. It's one thing to have a conversation with a complete stranger, I can do that no problem at this point in my adult life. But the level of intimacy required to pantomime a conversation seems obscene to me. I always feel like I'm in a porno with my clothes off with my brand new co-star when I have to start pantomiming with a person I don't know. I think it's the degree of non-verbal communication it requires, forcing you to be immediately intimate or aware of all that is intimate in our communications.

Another extra told me Gypsy Boots died. He was in his 90s. He was the model for Nature Boy (the Nat King Cole and the Moulin Rouge song). He was an extra's extra, they had a party for him every year at Paramount. Kirk Douglas would show up. Being a 90 year old extra sounds like god has started my eternal punishment early. He sounded like another legend of the background brigade, but I looked him up on-line:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsy_Boots

I passed by the Seinfeld stage today. The show was on for 8 years. Now it's all gone, except for a plaque. Sometimes I think we're a nation of plaques, using them as a bread crum trail to find our way home.