Holiday Hollywood Death Cab

Rolled through the streets backwards yesterday. Yup, back at the Hollywood Death Cab Tour. Had holly sprigs hanging from the bumper. Holiday attendance in Hollywood, they needed the newbies to give the tour. Magic. Magic, it was. Hadn't been there in a month and a half, was worried the hour(+) jammed in my brain had gone on holiday.

For the most part I went to the cupboard and the information was there, and I had fine fun with the tourists. Had a group of Froggies in my front seat, sussed out their Paris accent, based on the "wheys" (that's how Parisian's say Yes), and threw in little french references here and there. The little boy looked at me with a moon face, hadn't learned to hide his feelings, and just smiled so happy at me, laughing at every joke. People got off all three rides (I only had to do three, it was a short day), and complimented me each and every time. Getting paid to make folks happy and doing it to their satisfaction. Makes the McWages lose their sting. Of course, if no one fills out a comment card that goes to my boss, all these compliments are lossed like tears in rain.

We even got to go down a Beverly Hills street normally closed off: Rose Bush Boulevard, the street of the current hit: Slutty Soccer Moms. The show has taken off in the ratings, and it's fun to have the peeps get to see something from a current TV show that they recognize, even though they just use the street in the opening credits.

The star of Slutty Soccer Moms heard through minions we were identifying her by her ONE hit before this show. Otherwise, no one knows anything this lady has done. So, when we were told we couldn't mention that older show and her in the same sentence, I got on IMDB (the internet movie database) and found the movie where she has been topless. That's now the movie I broadcast as her sole credit, each time we go by Rose Bush Boulevard. We also can't mention that the famous director, Stanley Shpongeysteiner, is doing a remake of Citizen Kane in the mansion where Joe Birney killed himself. So, while we go right by this elaborate house of Sloppy Joe's mansion, film detrius everywhere, we have to tell our guests there's nothing there ... I simply tell them repeatedly to look the other way when we go by (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) and then say if they do see anything it's an hologram, a computer generated effect commonly used in movies.

I tried to give hints to these two guys after the tour who wondered what it was. I kept saying Orson Wells, but they didn't get it. Oh and we got a memo to push a new store on the Hollywood Boulevard that sells shooting scripts from the movies. At the end of the movie, everyone is supposed to turn in their marked-up scripts. Most do, and thus, a new memorbilia item for hawking. We are supposed to announce this when we talk about dead screenwriters. We also have to do a paid announcment that Schwinn paid us to do about bicyles, because of the many bicycles you see on the backlot of Worldwide (the one studio we can drive by fairly close enuff to look in), grips lugging around equipment on their back, while pedaling furiously. And we have to push the new shows of our parent operating company, Trinity Broadcasting. We also have to push any new movies that Trinity's film arm may have, and one producer insisted we play FIVE minute clips of his film. The tour is tightly scripted, there's no way to play this clip, unless you get stuck somewhere. This is the same producer who pastes his ear to the window of his bunaglow (Feeb Marker was shot dead here), making sure we play the clip with him in it. Sheez. I fear it will only grow worse, until we are one giant commercial masquerading as a tour, forgetting the tour, and thus forgetting the facts that built the business.

best fucking dead guy in town

Tiny sucks shit! What's the difference between Tiny and shit? Shit smells better!

Yes, I was back working at Rabbit Studios, and I felt badly for Tiny. He appears to have graffiti written about him in more than one stage's toilet. Is Tiny a mean union boss, a nasty carpenter? Is he huge? Ya know, one of the big fat guys everyone calls "Tiny." Maybe Tiny is code for the owner of Rabbit Studios, Rubrick Killport. Maybe they all call him Tiny behind has back and write graffiti about him. The funniest thing is that Tiny appears to have taken notice. Near one of the graffiti slanders was a small salvo: "You're really stupid." I imagine Rubrick Killport, late for a meeting where he fires half the staff of some dreadful reality division, ducking into the toilet, pooping his life out on the john, and being enraged by the tirades against him. He takes out his pen and writes "You're really stupid" and feels vindicated.

The toilets on studio lots are often hidden inside the sets. So, you walk into the "Lamp Shop," or "Sully's Luncheonette" and it's just a false front, but the toilet works. If you are ever on a studio lot, and you see a normal person walking, and then darting into a shop, they are prolly giving nature it's due-due. The phones generally work too. I love the site of a stagehand using the phone on a New York City street that's otherwise makebelieve.

The other thing I've noticed about Rabbit Studio's New York sets is they look kinda scary. Especially at night. However, I've noticed that the bottom half of some of the sets, have been gentrified like the city itself. But, the top half has been left to disrepair. The camera rarely shoots past the first floor level of NY, so you can get away with slightly dicier second floors.

The show I was filming today: "Deaf Court." About a special court in NY that tailors to people who are deaf. Prosecutors, Judges, etc., are all deaf, and they solve crimes in the deaf community. We were filming a crime scene, yellow tape cordoning off the area where the body lie amoldering on the sidewalk. They used a real person, covered in blood, and he could lie amazingly still. I think people specialize in this, and with all these dead people shows now, it could be a lucrative career ("I bought my house cuz I'm the best fucking dead guy in town").

The wind kept blowing the yellow tarp off this guy, and spreading flake blood on the background bystanders. One woman complained to an AD that her dress had been ruined by the fake blood. We were basically making a NY street look alive, so we walked around in a box, from the four corners of the streets crossing. I hope it doesn't look too cheesy to see the same people pass by eight times in a scene, but I guess no one really pays that close attention.

They set one of us, just one, up in a window. The guy takes orders extremely well, and when we came back from lunch, he calls from the window to the AD on the street below if he could come down for a bathroom break! He must have fallen asleep, sitting in a chair looking out a window, and didn't hear lunch called.

Another extra brought his car to set, like me, because they needed cars to fill the street. The extra then ditched set for a while, and they couldn't move his car when they needed to. He was fired. All the ADs were very dramatic about the firing, mulling it over very loudly, when they had decided he would be fired, they also were very demonstrative about this too. Then they fired him publicly and again, loudly. No closed door firing for this dude. Not the biggest deal to get fired as an extra, but I still felt for the dude.

You have to be careful when you ditch set. Even if you think you are just walking around the corner to snag a bagel, they could start filming at any moment. And when they do, you had better be there. So, you spend a lot of time standing and waiting, wondering if you have enough time to run back to your car for a book, go to the john, etc., and ultimately feeling like you better stay put.

I had to start one scene inside a building, coming down the stairs, and then going to my car to get something from it. In the building I started, they actually had a couple of rooms they used, so this was somewhat of a working building. The rooms were filthy, and looked they had been used as a crack whore palace. Dust from set construction, garbage, etc. I wonder if someone had ever fucked in these rooms. It would be a perfect afternoon delight, sneaky sex lunch break. Imagine the cheating married boss, taking his secretary to the commisary, and then into the NY sets for a little action. Filthy fun.

Very curious to see if my car makes it in the show, they did shoot around it a lot. My car is somewhat unique, and uniquely painted, so I got a lot of comments on it, and the stagehands quizzed me about it on breaks. They put NY license plates over my Cali plates on the car. Had sticky stuff on the back of the faux-plates, lickety-split, I had a car registered in NY. Thought this would be great for pulling liquor store heists, and imagined getting a bunch of these, and selling to criminal types. A jeckyel and hyde prop man could dress sets by day, and rob people by night.

I had one moment where I was talking to my pal, the one who told me he used to work as an exec for a large record company. It was a sad moment, he suddenly looked intently at me during small talk, and said:

"Did you ever imagine you'd be doing this?"

"Ha!" bitter laff from me. No, never. Thought I'd be running a studio by now, I was such an egomaniac, although on some daze I also thought I'd be found dead in a hollywood shit-box apartment, with tons of never-used scripts heaped around my corpse. Bi-Polar-Express for me. This same guy was telling me about how he wanted to bring cans of tuna -- no wait -- packets of tuna with him, when we go to a set where they stiff us on lunch (like they did today. bastards). Here he is so concerned about money that he won't eat at the studio commisary because of it's exorbidant $5 meal charge, and he's gonna carry packets of tuna on him, yet, once he was partying with the record industry, living the high life. This town can put you out to the curb quickly. You don't see it coming, and you don't understand why you can't go back inside the club. I used to own the Club! Not anymore, you're just an extra with your nose smunched up against the glass, watching the patrons eat their expensive meals, packets of tuna in your pockets.

It's been quiet lately, a job here and there, and I haven't been back to Visionquest, despite partying with the director Robert Barker. My friend Blankie has been going every day, and it just kills me. Today, she took her boyfriend to set, which is usually a big no-no, but she felt secure in doing so. I tried one last attempt to get the director's assistant to assert their right to book what extras they want, but she apparently has bigger fish to fry than a freakin' extra. The whole episode makes me feel stupid, that I thought I was gonna be working steady, ashamed that I was so dumb not to see yet another Hollywood Hurdle. Stumble over the hurdle and lose the race. Hollywood is essentially hurdles, and you better be able to get up and keep running.

So I run, onward against the wind ceasly beating me back ...

Dunce

"Sadly, he realized how low Fortuna had spun his wheel. He had never imagined that he would one day be praying that people buy hot dogs from him."

This from "Confederacy of Dunces." Rivaled by few books in american literature. I tucked it in my apron today, I was playing a hot dog vendor on a commercial for the Travel Channel. Has any extra ever prepared so thoroughly for a role so thoroughly in the background? I pray that someone fast-freezes the frame with me, and realizes what I tucked into my apron. At great personal cost. I had tailored my costume without approval. I may be dead one day, but if you watch all the footage I appeared in, I'll leave a bread crum trail of truth. Will the birds eat my bread crums? Of course they will. Plus, for someone to do the extensive kind of research required to find all the movies and TV shows I have appeared in briefly, I will have to commit a henious crime. Between fame and infamy for this situation, I'm betting on infamy.


Oh, and I stole a meal that wasn't mine. HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! I was working non-union, and they cut us loose right before lunch, so they wouldn't have to feed us. Too bad, so sad: I stayed and had lunch. What-the-fuck-ever. Memo to Myself #154: Everyone Eats.

I went to see a TV show last night and got paid. No one will go to this show, so they give you fifteen big ones to clap and laff and bark and sit up on your hind legs. A friend writes for it, but he had ditched, and I didn't see him during the show. Remember that the next time your watching a show and hear the hee-hawing laff track behind it: it may be recycled from a 70s show, OR, it could be peeps thinking about how they will spend their 15 bux, real dollars they put in your hand after the show.

Bored of Me.

Can I divorce myself? My relationship with me has gone south, gone sour. I'm just so tired of everything I think, every miserable, boring, pathetic excuse that pops in my head. Every fantasy I come up with seems the same. Yes, the young boy takes a pill, grows a thick beard, turns into a man and screws his third grade teacher. Zzzzzz.

I know what I'm going to think before I think it. I know what I am going to think about my thinking before I think it. I'm tired of my predictable self-loathing, and I'm tired of my equally predictable self-celebration to combat it. A comedian once said about the 80s diet drink:

"I cannot drink Cystal-Lite because I don't believe in me."

It's not that I don't believe in me, I'm just tired of my beliefs. My prejudices. My likes, my hates.

I AM BORING THE SHIT OUTTA MYSELF.

What's the solution? Just being contrary to who I am? That's boring too. Is there a me somewhere in the knotted pipes of the cereberal cortex that is actually interesting? Does boredom of one's soul lead to debauchery, like making small cuts on your arm to jar you into being alive? Is that why celebrities pay to get craped on by hookers? They're overly sated? That would, however, indicate boredom of an act.

My malaise is more precise: I'm sick of me. I think me and me needs a cooling off period. I/We need to have separate beds, to spend more time apart. Schizophrenia could be just a dirty word for needing some space from myself. I've decided this is a good decision, and I'm packing up my CDs for the move. I've gotten a compartment for myself on the West side of my brain, and I'm redecorating with plaids. Not sure how it will turn out, but after 36 years, I think a respite is called for.