I'm working on Governor! (the musical), one of the longer-running drama shows still left on the reality-landscape of television. And, I'm working with one of it's biggest icons: Nala Neldon, the star of the great sitcom: S*Q*I*U*S*H. Today he's on Governor, which is the show I'm booked on. Long-running TV shows have laid-back peeps, no one's too worked up. Wardrobe is tough on this show, because it's about the Ohio Governor, they frequently want you to have expensive suits. Network show, successful, but the wardrobe department is required to lean heavily on the peeps just above the poverty-level to supply their product.

Nala plays a gubentorial candidate, and during breaks waxes nostalgic about S*Q*U*I*S*H. He talks about their head writer, an alumni from the Alqonquin Roundtable of Comedy Writing: Sid Ceaser's show of shows. Their headwriter would knock out a script in seconds, not unlike the Governor's [roducer/creator/headwriter, who wrote 96 of the episodes. That's a lot of writing. When Nala plays his scene he looks directly at me, in my eyes, and I try to give him a skeptical look. Then the young latino star, Denny Spatz shows up, and he plays his scene to me as well. I even talk to him a bit. I'm playing an Ohio farmer today, got my Carhart hooded jacket on, which now has been picked up by the hipsters. I was in a swanky kitchen store the other day, and I saw a man wearing shot-sleeve t-shirt over long-sleeved flannel, work boots, and a mesh hat with "John Deere" on it. In my youth, he would have been the 155 pounder on my high school wrestling team, dressed up for the dance, but now he's a gay man, borrowing rural icons. I've decided to stay a gay man, dressing like a gay men, not a cartoon character.

I'm thankful to be dressing rural/hip today, so at least I didn't have to show up in a suit and get yelled at for not having three more ... Nala Neldon finishes his scene to an older extra saying "How do you think they keep the prices low at Walmart?" I interject, when the older background guy stays mute,

"Because they sell cheap crap."

"Cheap Crap?," sez Nala Neldon laffing.

"Well, where do you shop?"'

"Kmart of course. Walmart sucks," I say, and get a laff.

The extra all give me shit and buzz about the Kmart vs. Walmart fracas. The director thinks this improv brilliant, thanks me, and shoots the scene again with a close-up for me. I open my eyes and realize I've been asleep dreaming.

Our director has opened up the ice cream bar. We're filming in a real-life Arcardia diner, I actually use to come her in my accounting life, makes me feel weird. The director has opened up the production budget to include ice cream for everyone. One extra asks for ice cream, but I don't feel impertienient enuff to ask.

I hear the owner saying he wants to "drop the hammer" on one of his real-life waitreeses, she's been lazy lately. I tell this to the extra playing the waitress, just to past the time, and she sez she's gonna ask him for a job! She may play a waitress on TV, but she is one in real life! Our bartender in the boat movie, was actually a bartender in real life. Had those stand-up, bartender rythms to his delivery. I get called to be on set by the A.D., she sez "fresh face," and points at me. I haven't been called a fresh face in many-a-moon. It only means I haven't been on set yet, but so what.

It's raining like a mutha here, and yet the irony is, most of it will not show up on camera. You need to put milk in your raindrops to get them to play on screen. I also like what one of the grips sez when he gets asked by passerby's what they are filming: "Mayonaisse Commercial. Makes them go away every time."

The extra sitting next to me has a thumb that doesn't work. Doesn't point up all the way in the classic hitchiking pose (thumbs up). He sez it's worked to his advantage when hitchiking, people pull over to see why he's making such a weird signal, and not the traditional one. When he tries to make the "thumbs up," signal, it looks more like he has finger on the pin of a grennade.

Our setting is Ohio, but and they've figured that foreign cars are against the law in the midwest. They may be scarce, but certainly in the parking lot, you would see one. Not for Governor. They've taken out my car, which is foreign. They've also put fake license plates on all the cars, and little bits of carpet on the bottom of shoes that clack too much on the diner's floor surface. All day, I realize how foreign these peeps are to the midwest, all the dumb and broad assertions they make about the midwesterns. When people of any group complain that hollywood unfairly portrays them I always think: well, duh. That's their stock and trade: generalize and broaden to abstraction.