Yesterday was not too great for me for a variety of reasons. Yesterday was also quite a long day for what was suppose to be a short day. Almost every shot was on the dolly and that ment that I was working the whole time. That is not a bad thing normally it was just that we were in a church and the isles were sloped so pushing the 400pluse dolly up and down them took there toll. So much so that at about 4:00 AM I awoke to horrific pain in my left calf. The pain of the cramp made me throw up. It took about 30 minuets for me to contain it and even then the pain was quite powerful. Back to last night, after work the crew went to a local bar (the same one we went to a few nights ago). It was a monday night and we were the only ones there. Our main actor D. David was buying our drinks. That was really very nice of him. Especially when you realize that the bar maid was upselling with out asking either D. David or the customer. I don't know the exact amount but I am sure it was quite high as there were about 14 people or more. Toward the end of the night I was standing outside when the bar maid came out to have a smoke. She was rather tall and had shorter blond hair and was wearing some spandex shorts that let her bum cheeks hang out and a low cut tank top. She said they didn't make her wear it but that she got god tips in it. Did I mention that on more than one occasion that night she gave herself a wedgie for the cheer of the crowd. Any way she came out and had a smoke near me and started telling me that she was from near my hometown and that she was moving back toward there with her 4 year old daughter soon. After she gets her boob job that her boyfriend is paying for ofcourse. She gave me all kinds of details that I didn't need or want to know. We later went to Angelique's room and talked for a bit, then I left. They stayed and talked and laughed for a while longer. How do I know this, her room is right above mine. And that's all for the moment.

Another Monday morning. Today we were in a church and will be back tomorrow. Today was, for me very frustrating. I am not too sure why and that isn't all that good. I think it might be that I am spending too much time with these people. It's nothing personal. I rather like spending large chuncks of time by myself and have not been afforded that very much since I started this project. Also the lack of having a "life" could be contributing to the mix. All we really have time to do is work and sleep. Some of the crew stay up late and gossip and hang out and sometimes go out to a club. It is a lot of fun and you get to know the people a lot more, but I don't have the energy to do that every night. Unless I know you ( and even sometimes when I do know you) it takes a lot of energy for me to interact with people. Not very often but sometimes. One thing that is plaguing the entire show is lack of communication. And it effects all departments and aspects of this movie. No one knows how to say what they want, myself included. Hand in hand with that is that no one really listens too well. But enough with that, again I am in my new room after having two others in as many nights. Finally I am on the bottom floor and have a single bed. Following the electricions lead I have put colored gel on the lights in my room. The light on the bed is green, the one on the table that I am typing on is yellow and the one on the TV is red. I have everything in place for the "pleasure dome" as eric calles it, all I need now is the power strip I forgot at home. I will pick one up at sears tomorrow. What is the "pleasure dome" you ask? Well in order to make my month long stay a little more enjoyable I have brought some things from home. First off I have my Casio E115 hand held computer with a small travel keyboard( its what im typing on right now) and a modem card, various magazines, and (the key to the dome) a portable DVD player that can play DVD, CD, CDR and MP3. That is attached to a box that plugs into the TV and also is wired to my computer speakers that I brought. So I have over 20 DVD's to choose from and ovrer 10 CD's as well as one MP3 disk that has over a hundred songs on it. I would say I am fairly well stocked. At the moment I am listening to Gameface, Guy is now the bass player and he made us a CD of their songs so we would be familiar with them when we went to see them play. Today wasn't all bad I got two calls that lifted my spirits. One was from Jennifer. She called toward the end of our lunch break. We took lunch a half hour late so that was good timing as I don't think I would have felt it ringing or been able to answer it. I had actually been thinking of her today and would have liked to talk to her. Even though it was a short conversation it helped. The second was from Susan. I did not actually get to talk to her as she called after lunch( see above ) and she left a message. Now I had thought about her just the other day for various reasons and was very surprised to hear from her. She left a very nice message. It made me miss my friends and home so I guess it wasn't a very good message. I kid, I liked the message and wanted to call her back and hear her voice but we were at the begining of another shot that would take almost two hours of dorking around to finnish. And by then it was way too late to bother anyone even though they would tell you "you can call me anytime day or night. No really you can. Seriously I stay up late and have nothing to do." They would be cursing you the moment you hung up.

Again I have only found time to update this page when I am at home during my days off, however short they are. John Stark drove Kirk and I home this time after a 16 hour day. Kirk had us set up a moving theater in John's car. We had my portable DVD player in front with cables leading to a TV VCR combo in the back with Kirk while John listened to his CD walkman. It was fun but a little crazy. Wed was our day with Paul Rodriguez and we shot in a laundry mat. That was the 16 hour day. He was a nice enough guy to work with, he kept cracking jokes between takes. We were in Fresno for a few days earlier that week. The hotel rooms were great. They had 1960's decor including a white reclining chair and cool hanging lights. We shot in a park outside of the court house. So what do parks and court houses have in common? Crack heads. And boy were there plenty of them. While in Fresno I went to the local Ghost Mall. It was 7:30pm and not a soul in sight. Well there were people there just not what you would expect at a mall. Half of the shops were empty and the second floor was converted to office space, but it did have a comic book shop so it couldnt be all that bad.

As I write I am updating my site. I have added a page called Time and you can get to it from the links on the left of this page. It has pictures, QuickTime vr and video clips for the movie I am working on Time Changer. Aside from that I am doing laundry and relaxing in my room. yes that means I have a day off. I drove home with Eric but am going to drive back up by myself and caravan with Kirk and John. Eric is off to Hawaii and will return to work in a week. In his absence we (the grips) will be using Jr. who first came on with the electrics to sit in the condor. The condor is a large lift that we place lights in when we film at night to simulate moon light. The lucky guy that gets to baby sit the lights has to stay up there all night and maybe move a light once an hour if that. he has a rope that he drops when he needs something and takes a large empty jug with him when he goes up. When he comes down the jug is full if you know what I mean. We left right after filming on Wed night Thurs morning but not after witnessing an altercation smack dab in the middle of our set. We were shooting at an intersection when a car pulled up. A guy walked up to the car and started to smash the passengers head, then ran away. It was over rather fast and no one did anything but watch. Weird. I find that on the days when we start work late, like 4:00pm I don't leave the hotel room until about an hour before to get food. I just lay in bed watching TV. I don't know why there isn't any motivation to do anything like explore the area but there isn't. Who knows things might change.

Monday night Tuesday morning: today was spent entirely in a hotel room. 10 people plus in a small room with hot lights, no A/C, and a definate time frame. It was inevitable that tempers would rise. Oddly though the situation did not excell to the point that I was used to. rather amid some grumblings everyone kept their heads and got the job done. Sure we only had to drop one shot from our list. But that is less than most shoots that i have been on. All things considered today went like most of the other days, pretty well. Of course that is from my point of view. While we were wraping up the equipment they gave us our perdiem money. They ran out when it came to me so i only got part of mine. It's ok but it felt like a Charlie Brown moment. After my guys and I picked up some food and a shot. Eric said his tummy felt warm. Later I wandered over to party central, hair and make up's rooms. I had a few drinks then camer back to my home away from home.

Well lets see now, I started my day at 4:00am on Saturday. I could not sleep at all and lay in bed. The silence was broken by a familiar high pitched squeel. It was that of the across the street neighbor's nasty car alarm. If you recall a few weeks ago it did much the same thing only this time it was later and i was not about to go over there. It was someone else turn. And true to the neighborhoods form it took about 10 minuets of me peering through my blinds before a poor soul appeared to stop the madness. Well after all that ther was no use in going back to sleep, so i started my day. When I got to the set today I felt really bad. You know the kind of sick that comes at you from both ends( sorry if that was too much info). I was as white as a ghost and was sweating like a pig (sorry eric) just sitting down let alone doing work. At abot 2:00pm the took me back to the hotel. I did my business and sleept a few hours until i felt good enough to return to work. I was by no means healed and suffered through the night until i could get back to my room. But that would prove a difficult task as the shoot seemed like it would never end. It did end at 1:15. I found relief at 1:24. I know I did not get any pictures up yet but I had a lot of relaxing to do on my days off. But here is a clip of one of the things i do on the set, remember I was sick. I hope you like this and this one but this is big. I am tired and tired.

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.

It is shortly after one o'clock in the A.M. on Monday the eighth. I am alone in a hotel room far from my home. I am thirty years old now. I guess now would be the time that I should be taking stock of my life and planning the second stage of it or just freaking out. In actuallity niether has come to pass. I am just starting a job that will last a month, the longest job I have had in this industry to date. Prior to starting the job I would mentally switch between being excited and being less than happy. There were various reasons for this, none that are too important. Now after the second day is behind us I can safely say that I still don't have an answer to how i feel. Some of that is due in part to the fact that I am having a harder time than ever before getting "into" the Cinematagrapher or DP. I just dont "get" this guy and he is fairly hard to work with. I know that is a little vague but without spending a few hours going over it that is all I can say. But I can't help but think that the fact that I just turned thirty might have something to do with the indeference that I am feeling. I did not want to put too much into the fact that I was going to be old. In mind I don't feel old. But body is a different thing all together and I am feeling my age in ways that I never thought I could.
Well I guess I will stop with the self indulgence for a bit and tell you about today. The amount of work was not all that bad. I have worked many many days that were physically harder than this one but that doesnt mean that today was a cake walk by any means. I was told that today was one of if not "the" hardest day. We were outside almost all day. As with any day where I work outside I got sunburned. Nothing out of the ordinary if you know me at all. I was told to look forward to a day where I have to haul the camera dolly up six flights of stairs. Lets hope they were pulling my leg. On that note there was only one dolly shot today, the first of the show, an easy one at that. The crew seems to be getting together quite well. I don't know anyone's name. I have to try to stay up late and sleep in tomorrow as we have a nine o'clock call time tomorrow night. We are going to shoot all night for the next three nights. I don't really care for night shoots. There is a time around three thirty or four when you start to lose it. Your only friend is a six ounce can of Mountain Dew.
When I think about it I have a hard time believeing that I will be able to do this for a month straight. I try not to think about it.

It is after midnight on what is now sunday the 7th of Oct. I am sitting in my home for the next few weeks a hotel room in Fresno that is rank with a pungent stale smoke smell. Today was the first day of work on a feature film that I have the job of Best Boy Grip/ Dolly Grip. If you don't know what those things are I can tell you at a later date. Only time will tell if this will be "fun". I am sure I can have fun but weather the shoot on the whole will be enjoyable has yet to be seen. My plan is to post some pictures for you all to see as the show progresses. I hope it all works well. All I have with me is my Casio E115 hand held compter, a modem card, folding keyboard, and cameras. I took a special video clip with my camera. HERE I hope you can view it. It is an AVI file. As for the crew I only know a few from before so there are lots of new faces. The director on the second or third take of the first shot told the non professional extra that it was ok if she messed up, as each roll of film only cost about $2000.00. I felt bad for her. That's a lot of pressure for some one who doesnt know what they are doing. He said it as a joke but there was some truth in it. In the end she did it great and had fun, I think. What a ay to start a show. Well thats it for now. Hopefully I will w

Ok, so it is just after 2:00 AM on Monday morning. I am all over the net, but getting close to going to sleep. The rest of the block, as far as I know is already asleep. Out of the night and through my double pained windows comes the shrieking wail of a mighty car alarm. it took about a minuet of constant screeching with 2 second intervals to reset before I was out onto the drive way. Bare foot I stood eyes zeroed in on the offending auto, waiting for the person in distress that would be bounding out of their front door to survey the damage. And there I wait. It only took about 3 to 4 minuets before I saw some action. Not in the direction I was looking but rather from behind me. My new neighbor of two days John appeared clad in his boxers and shirt. We stood for about another 3 or so minuets marveling at the fact that no one else had produced themselves from their house. Were we the only ones to be standing out on our driveways in disbelief of the goings on? The answer to that my friends came not a scant 7 minuets later when, after John and myself had arrived to the door of (who we thought) was the offender. After much deliberation of course I made John deal with the door knocking. When finally the head of a middle aged man produced itself from within, it spoke:

"Hello."

"What's going on here?"

"Is the alarm going off?" He had to speak loud as the alarm was going off.

"yes" We said in unison.

"It's my brother in-laws." He spat back at us.
And with that he disappeared into the darkness and the door shut.
It was at this point that John looked at me and I at him and a great quieted laughter erupted forth as we headed back to our respective homes.

"Did he just say Is the alarm going off?"

"Yeah he did."

"Is he deaf?"

"Yeah from the alarm going off for 20 minuets."

About 2 minuets or so later a younger man appeared on the lawn in a football jersey of some sort and aimed his fist at the car in question. There were two short beeps then silence. With that I shook John's hand and wished him luck tomorrow at work and promptly sat down to tell you all about this. To me this brings up many questions, but I have neither the time or the patients to discuss them here.