It is Thursday and I am at home now. We are working 5 day weeks with our days off falling on Thursday and Friday. The rest of the night shoots went well without incident. One of the nights we were shooting in a “Mel’s” diner type of place, it was called Mearls. It had a 50’s carhop feel it also had roaches. There are some interesting people that live in Fresno/ Visalia. You can definitely pick out our hair and makeup people from a group of locals. Yesterday before the shoot Eric and I went to lunch at a Mexican place. The food was fine, it was no Jalisco but good nonetheless. Afterward we spotted a thrift store and decided to see what delights awaited us. I couldn’t wait to see what the fine people of Fresno had let go not knowing what they had. Well I guess they, not knowing what they had, never bothered to buy “it” in the first place. Quite possibly the worst thrift store I have been to, they did not even have any men’s clothes at all. Well they did have some ties and a pair of home made punker boots. About the crew: my department is doing quite well. We are working together great in my opinion. I haven’t heard any complaints yet, but I don’t know if I would anyway. Kirk is the Key Grip and technically my immediate superior, Eric is my Grip and John (or Starkles as I call him) is the Swingman*, I as I have said before am the Best Boy Grip/ Dolly Grip. Normally the BB Grip is referred to as the Truck Beyatch as he is responsible for everything that comes off the truck. But because of budget constraints we are short handed and I have to play double duty. Actually I am not really doing the “BB” job justice, Eric and John are really kicking butt in that dept. I am mainly focusing on the Dolly. We haven’t had too many moving dolly shots and even fewer complicated ones. Sometimes I want the complicated, minuet long shots where I have to do five different things hitting my marks exactly every time. And other times I am glad they do most of the move with the camera and I just have to push. As I said before the rest of the crew is working together fine and there have not been any confrontations as of yet (sorry Mr. Garcia) but I will let you know with blistering detail when it does happen. I mean this is only the first week after all we still have weeks to get on each other’s nerves. I will try to post some of the pictures I have taken today or tomorrow.

*Swingman is what we call a guy that will help both the Electricians and the Grips. Normally a Grip doesn’t touch any electric equipment and visa versa, but a Swingman can.