kthxbai

This has been okay, but it's been like wobbling and weaving on a low brick wall when I could have just been cruising along on the sidewalk. I haven't quite put my finger on it, but The Sixth Notebook is just not working for me. But I love blogging, whatever first drew me to it is very much still there. So, I'll keep trying, until something feels good and really works. Hopefully, it will be THIS.

See you there!

more weird nap dreams

I was meeting my friend Jeffrey for coffee at a restaurant. Once I got there, I noticed he seemed uncharacteristically harried and quiet, and looked a little windblown, unkempt. You have NO idea how unlike Jeff this is, he is always the picture of grace, sleek, neat, together, open, warm, collected, welcoming.

I had to go to the restroom right away, wishing I hadn't because I wanted to make the most of this rare occasion of seeing him. Couldn't wait though, so off I went, into this convoluted maze of hallways in the middle of this building. I couldn't find the restroom at first, but then stumbled across the door, nearly missing it. It was dark and strange in there, ceilings too high, strange angles and turns. When I emerged, I could not make out which hallway I should use, tried one and ended up going up some stairs that looked like they belonged in a grade school. Back down the stairs, whole other hallway, this one leading to the back stage of a music venue. I ducked back into the halls, took another one, this leading to an abandoned gym. All the equipment was silhouetted in dark blue light, looking creepy and dead, hand towels and pieces of track suits hanging off the handles and seats. Back into the mess of hallways, finally I got the right one back to this café, which feels now like just a small part of this huge old building.

I had become extremely agitated at the waste of time, and Jeff was slurping his coffee irritatedly and scribbling in a folder. He looked worse than before and something was the matter; concerned, I didn't bother him with the tale about my getting lost. Somehow, he had gotten drenched, completely soaked, even though he had not apparently moved from the booth. He said, "Let's go", and took my forearm. We went outside to where the street would be, but there was this treehouse fort thingy and we had to walk up a wooden ramp to get in. There were dogs up there who looked tired and detached, distracted. The roof started leaking. There was one little dog we had to get, a cute thing, Jeff's own dog, I gathered. He put the dog in my arms and we started to return outside, but for some reason we did not have to go down a ramp, but stairs, and not all the way down. The roof started leaking way more, then profusely. I thought, is this how Jeffrey got wet? Out from under the roof, we got sploooshed all of a sudden by a very powerful unexpected wave, as though we were at stormy seas. Things got darker, we rode this wave upward and I was extremely worried about this dog, holding as tightly as I could without hurting it. I could no longer see Jeff, but he was there, I could hear him saying something. What was odd was, his frame of mind did not seem to change at all, he did not become alarmed or any sudden new expression or mood, he just still seemed kind of rushed and irritated. Another couple of progressively higher and stronger waves pushed us upward, we just rode along. I don't remember feeling like swimming or struggling, just holding the dog and riding the waves. I felt badly for the ordinarily sunny Jeff, darkened today.

Then I woke up.

So strange! What does it all mean?

Horrible Dream, Great Philip K. Dick Novella

I walked by an high-ceilinged school room at a college with lots of big windows. Over on one side was a nook for storage, recessed at the side of the chalkboard. There was a large shelf there with a basketball, a few cardboard boxes with jerseys hanging over the sides, football cleats and helmets, sack of white cheerleader gloves and ... a very old man. I drew in my breath, what is he doing up there? Very concerned, he looked terrified yet resigned - a haunting and horrible expression if you have ever seen it. I followed his eyes downward and there was this student in a basketball jersey looking up at him. His top expression was blank but underneath he was cackling. He was holding a red rope. I zipped away, and dreamed something entirely else and forgot completely about it. 100% out-of-my-brain forgot, *poof*. But then, feeling I was on my way back someplace, I walked through this school, just moseyin' right along, and - *gasp!!* there is the old man, hanging from the red rope, part of the shelf kicked down. Its contents were all over the floor in the nook, spilling forward toward me.

I brought my eyes downward, and there, right in front of me, eyes wide and glaring into mine, was the student, the killer. He was pissed. I thought, hysterically, you did this in front of big windows! Were you just hoping nobody would walk by? I ran like hell. I did not feel followed. I call the police, and 911 has a recorded message. I try again, I try again, I keep trying, running the whole time. I draw a blank from there until getting over this hill in Bellevue, Wa., where I found a very green lawn and sat down, then laid down, then, my phone still in my hand hitting redial, redial, I fell asleep.

Paramedics with swatches of light blue tarp (?) and a detached look and feel woke me up and handed me my phone. One said, "You are okay. You need to get up and go home, you are on a residential lawn." I said, "I've been trying to call 911 for HOURS it seems! No one will answer the phone, someone's committed a murder at the school!" He said, "Listen, get up, here", and he handed me his hand. I got up, he said, "Where do you live, we need to get you out of this private neighborhood." I didn't know how to answer at all, I had no answer. He led me to the ambulance and kinda shoved me up into the back and closed the door. I thought, this kind of detachment and cold behavior is odd for paramedics. I sat on the stretcher. Hearing rustling behind me, I turned my head around, and there was the student in the basketball jersey, grinning.

I woke up sucking my breath in, eyes wide.

Tour Day at Starline

Hullo. Well, I can't work, so I'm playing a bit. We've got several of the big British Double Decker buses, but many of them are being used for the new Hop on-Hop off tour, and the ones that are used by Miguel and myself for the regular one-hour Hollywood tour are being given maintenance, so. The powers that be are being quite kind to us, finding other stuff for us to do, so my day, today, was spent taking other peoples' tours. I had a blast.

I started off on John the Trolley guy's tour:



Here is John, who does some pretty convincing impressions of the Hollywood stars whose stories he tells, as well as being highly informative and a lot of fun, and his trusty Trolley. On the road with him...



... I got the best look at/photo of the Hollywood Sign I've seen yet,



...and the Bronson Gate. Now, I usually see this several times a day myself when I give my own tour, but today there was this super cool Transformer guy in the archway.



I was then gonna go on wonderful Lisa's tour...



But then I found out I was on John Leigh the Rock Star's tour. Both of these peeps are amazing, intelligent, have awesome personalities and a lot to teach. On John's tour, we got to see people's houses in the Hollywood Hills, which was great for me because I love it there and want to live there. Even if I had a kajillion dollars, enough to have a house in Beverly Hills or Holmby Hills, I would still want to live in the Hollywood Hills. I'm a sucker for this town. We went up to Mulholland Drive, where I saw:



The Los Angeles Skyline (I really want to get this at night), and



The Hollywood Bowl with its acoustic shell and 18,000 seats. This is really the same shot, but I tipped the camera downward to try to focus on the Bowl. Then, we came back to the Chinese Theater Kiosk and I visited with:





Kelly! She rocks the house, yo



Robin, such a sweet and happy guy - if I'm low energy or in a bummed mood, his big smile never fails to cheer me up...



The cool guy with lots of tattoos whose name I can't EVER remember :P I suck



The lovely Mary, always working hard, very kind and welcoming. I did not get to see:



Brian, my boss' brother, who does this cool murder and mayhem Haunted Hollywood tour. I plan on taking that with Carson, Chi, Delane and a few other pals on Halloween this year. He wasn't there today :( But...



Richard was (he still is, it's only 5:25 p.m.). This is my boss whose family I work for. I feel pretty damn lucky to work for such great people. My camera's card was full at this point, or I would have taken one of his dad Fred, Kami who hired me, Gwen who is just a saint, Asher and some of Richard's other brothers, as well as James, Muhammed and some of the other cool characters I see from day to day. I will get them tomorrow or soon. I love Richard's family and all these folks.



Richard in his natural habitat.

So, today was cake. I took notes, I took pictures, I wore my regular clothes. And got paid :) I didn't get to see or snap everybody I wanted to, but I will, and I think now that I have a digital camera (THANKS, JOY!!!) I'll be documenting more of the day to day life I live here while working toward making my big dreams happen.

WOW:


Ratatouille is a masterwork from the first frame to the last, just amazing. Pixar keeps topping themselves in every conceivable way: graphics, cleverness in storytelling, making things modern and current without datedness, expressions and movement on characters' faces, I could go on and on. WOW.

Also amazing, Carson:


I got to visit with my friend today - I do not get to see him very often, so that was rather fantastic. He is an amazing writer and story teller and is great with lights and camera. He is among the most intelligent people I have ever met, as well as being a deeply good human being. He fucking RULZ yo.

Rice.

Happy Independence Day!

Yee Haw

This Grammy winner was on my tour, yesterday:

"Joey Miskulin composes music for Disney's Cars

Jul 9, 2006.

Joey's song, "Rust-eze Polka" will be featured among the film's all-star voice talent including Paul Newman, Owen Wilson, and Bonnie Hunt, among many others. For further information visit the 'CARS' official web site.

Miskulin's Grammy Award Winning Albums:

'Monster's Inc--Scream Factory Favorites': Riders In The Sky (2003)
'Woody's Roundup Featuring Riders In The Sky': Riders In The Sky (2001)"

Post Transcription Chat Poetry Slam

1:09 PM Joy: DONE DONE DONE
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

15 minutes

1:25 PM Joy: R & L are having this long drawn out phone conversation about NOTHING THAT MATTERS

omg

I want to jump off a cliff

but I'm eating my lunch

BLAG

...is how I nearly always accidentally type the word BLAH on the first try. I have a bunch of words like that.

"Come Back, Little Sheba" was moving, tear-compelling, wonderful. For me, the theater is special among the arts. As other lovers of it have always known, the sacred may be found there, but it must be elicited with excellence in all areas coming together and giving you the magic sensation of it being greater than the sum of its parts. This play did that. I got lazy about writing a proper review, but I figured, that's really all one needs to know. If you would like the rich, fulfilling experience of a truly good stage play that is well executed, might I recommend "Come Back, Little Sheba" starring my pal Alan, and his no less than magnificent co-star, S. Epatha Merkerson. I knew she was a wonderful actor and I have always liked her, but I had never experienced her on the stage before and was shocked and amazed at her giftedness.

The Police show was fucking awesome. I had more fun than I even anticipated I would, very much worth the long days' wait. I fell in love with The Police when I was 11 years old, and never fell out, so this was very important to me. Thank you once again, Jason and Joy, for making this possible. I was expecting to suffer a broken heart for awhile from missing this show, but then I didn't miss it, thanks to you. And my heart sang!

But about the title of this post, it's mainly about the heat, which has been going on a little long without a break now. I need a Marine Layer. The high summer temps are no longer hard to get used to and I like the weather, but my hands get clammy, I wilt and tire too easily and it gets harder than usual to motivate myself to do everyday stuff (besides work, which is a relief). Also, the bright sun and blue sky, medicine for depression that I very much need, after awhile are just so bright and blue I need a break.

It's also about a case of the blues that's been a bit hard to shake in the past week or so. BLAH. Over soon, I'm sure.

Two Reviews On the Way

One, as promised, of "Come Back, Little Sheba" (read the two posts under this one) and two - THE POLICE AND THE FOO FIGHTERS show at Dodgers Stadium!! I got to go thanks to Jason (and an extra-ticket miracle).

Aprés le jeu d'étape

I will be writing a review of "Come Back, Little Sheba" tomorrow, in the meantime:

ALAN: "It's good to see you, sweetie! How are you!"

ME: "Alan!"

[Hug with smooch on cheek; I return smooch]

ME: "That was beautiful. You did beautifully."

ALAN [earnestly]: "Thank you."

ME [clearly still a bit verklempt]: "I cried buckets."

ALAN [smiling]: "Good!"

~Intermission~

ME [handing ALAN a slip of paper]: "I really miss seeing you guys down there. I have wanted to send you a couple of emails - I have sent you them...one around Christmas, and another one ... I'm keeping in touch with Jeff!"

ALAN: "Ahh, he's in New York, now."

ME: "He is, he's in New York now."

ME: "Will you send me an email?"

ALAN: [gesturing paper toward ME] "Yes, I will."

ME: [indicating and smiling at others present] "Thank you for your extra time, I know you're busy."

ALAN [waving them off]: "Oh, please!"

ME: "It's been good to see you."

ALAN: "Good to see you, too, sweetie! Take care."

[ALAN wraps arms around ME, now even more warmly with renewed familiarity and in sympathy that I miss him]

ME: "You did so well, you all did. Bye!"

ALAN: "Bye!"

It's P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T

We are fortunate here at The Sixth Notebook to be going to see "Come Back, Little Sheba" at the Kirk Douglas Theater this evening. We will be seeing our highly esteemed friend, actor Alan Rosenberg, do his job, and showing our happy and undying support.



Alan with S. Epatha Merkerson in "Come Back, Little Sheba"



From left, Alan, his lovely wife Marg Helgenberger and their son Hugh at the premiere of "Mr. Brooks"

Alan is the president of the Screen Actors Guild (or "prexy", as Variety magazine insists on calling him. We treasure Variety's content but have always been nearly horrified by their style book, completely unable to apprehend how these abominable abbreviations might be truly helpful or practical. They can't be saving that many lines; meanwhile, language peeps such as myself are pained to get through an article, wincing in anticipation of the next botchery). Anyhoo, I'm very much looking forward to the performance, and I will review it here, tomorrow.

Haircut

oh hai, lolcat can has code?

*Hands LOLCAT a tissue*, bless you.

If you get that joke, bless you, too.

In brainfuck, a Turing Complete minimus language for data direction:

The characters:

">", "<"

mean the commands:

Increment the pointer (to point to the next cell to the right), and Decrement the pointer (to point to the next cell to the left), respectively.

The characters:

"+", "-"

mean the commands:

Increment (increase by one) the byte at the pointer. and Decrement (decrease by one) the byte at the pointer, respectively.

Thanks to Arachnid, who intended to prove that LOLCODE is Turing Complete, we have the following:

IM IN YR LOOP
I HAS A THING
LOL THING R IPTR IN MAH INSTRUCTIONS

BTW Move tape head right
IZ THING LIEK ">"?
LOL LPTR IN MAH LTAPE R CELL
UPZ LPTR!!
IZ RPTR LIEK 0?
LOL CELL R 0
NOWAI
NERFZ RPTR!!
LOL CELL R RPTR IN MAH RTAPE
KTHX
KTHX

BTW Move tape head left
IZ THING LIEK "<"?
LOL RPTR IN MAH RTAPE R CELL
UPZ RPTR!!
IZ LPTR LIEK 0?
LOL CELL R 0
NOWAI
NERFZ LPTR!!
LOL CELL R LPTR IN MAH LTAPE
KTHX
KTHX

BTW Increment
IZ THING LIEK "+"?
UPZ CELL!!
KTHX

BTW Decrement
IZ THING LIEK "-"?
NERFZ CELL!!
KTHX

_______________________

HAI
BTW This is a BrainFuck interpreter
written in LOLCode  BTW It accepts as
input a BF program,followed by a "!",
followed  by any input to the BF program.
BTW Since BrainFuck is turing-complete,
this proves that LOLCode is too

Arachnid, speaking only as linguistic person, I'm nearly sure this is not a proof of Turing Completeness. It definitely means you are a crackerjack translator, and I am interested to know whether LOLCODE is Turing Complete (From Wikipedia:if it has a computational power equivalent to (i.e., capable of emulating) a simplified model of a programmable computer known as the universal Turing machine). I'm sure I'll never understand computer science well enough to know, but I'm gonna check back with the site admin at LOLCODE.

By George

Yay, now I will be back to blogging regularly since I now have the Internet on my very own home computer. So hopefully I'll also tweak and update the sidebar sometime soon, too. For starters, the other day I was at work and a few peeps showed up to smoosh their paws into wet cement. I wish I'd gotten a better angle of George Clooney for my camera, but did get a congenial smile at my actual face.

Yo

Ho Ho

Yo Ho Ho!

Here I Am, Still Alive...

...Still busy and tired, working hard. But around here, somewhere.

Refreshed:



Not so much:

Aaauuuggghhhh, TOO BUSY

I will write again and post more pix sometime soon, I have a lot of work and other shit to do as well as a problem (getting resolved) with these stupid landline peeps whom I am firing. FIRING!!!

Also, I am (as well as an editor and an extra) a nifty tour guide!!! And I get TIPS, so take that, Julie.

More Phone Pix

I took these too late in the day, but I couldn't bring myself to delete them . Sometime I'll get Joy to show me how I can crop and combine these to make a panorama:






A little virtual tour of 20th CF:

First of all:



Corporate HQ:



New York Street, overlit, sorry:

Inside NY Street:

Murals:









This one too is over-sunlit, unfortunately, and I didn't have time to find its placard. I'll fix both next time I go.

Phone Pix, Checking Out My Town

Snapping Hollywood, Part the First:
Painting Stuff in an Amusing Manner

It seems I have at least slightly underestimated the quality of my phone's camera. I have been dismissing it as close to useless, a Cracker Jack prize included for show on my new phone. I can barely see the images on its tiny screen, where they look terribly pixilated, and when I click to enlarge them at my service provider's website, they look grainy and smeary. But check out what happens to them when, after clicking to enlarge, I download them to the disk:





Not great, but not so bad, either. These are snaps of the amusing art found on some of the mailboxes around my town.



Here is an open birthday card to MLK, still there since it was splashed on a the side of a building a couple months ago.



And here is another mural, painted on one of the sound stages at 20th Century Fox, facing the Pico entrance. I had been working there on Shark a couple months ago when I took this, but gave up on snapping any more of the murals on future visits due to how they looked on my phone. I missed a few great opportunites. Well, I'll be working there (on Shark once more, as it happens), again tomorrow, so I'll get the other paintings then.

Also,I will be taking some more little eyeballings around the only other town I (yet) call home (Seattle being the other and my native city, the future one being Manhattan). And now that I know it may be worth the effort, I'll upload a few of the ones that have been living uselessly on my phone but may in fact be just as good as these.

"GoneGoneGone...

...she been gone so long, gonegonegone so long..."

But I'll be posting soon, just popping in to wave hi while I have a sec. See you probably next week.

Mystery Caller!

At just after 4p this afternoon, I checked the little cell phone to make sure someone at the office hadn't tried again in vain to reach me. He hadn't and all is well, but there on the screen was this little note:

"U don't talk to me any more cutie"

Now then: I've managed to spend almost the WHOLE time from then till now (an hour and a half or so) without it occurring to me that I might have been a wrong number, reveling in the lovely mysteries of the Secret Pal: Whoooo could it BE!? Who am I not thinking of? How awful should I feel for not being able to recognize him (him, certainly?) right away? Are we at all close? Were we? Hmmm!!

After a while I thought to try a reverse look up: I could only find out that it's a prefix for Mt. Pleasant, TX. Who do I know there, I mused. Anyone? Or who do I know from somewhere else, but who has family, work, other connection to Texas? Alas, I couldn't think of a single soul, but not long after came the moment it occurred to me that the sweet, lonely words were probably meant for another girl...

*Sigh*.

But not knowing anything for sure, I do still get to keep the mystery. I love little mysteries here and there in life. They spice things up a little.

MySpace Survey

House of Joy

Bon aprés-midi, Messieurs et Mademoiselles. I'm writing to you on a day I would ordinarily be hard at work, slaving away over various and assorted field reports. Instead I'm at Joy's house, eating Easy Mac, drinking lemonade, fucking around on the internet and listening to iTunes. I mined all the stuff that I'm sure I like from her vast library (I've spent hours on just this) into a playlist I can listen to when I'm here. I also wrote down stuff I'm not sure of, to listen through later.

I will go into work tomorrow to help our poor abandoned Luis, he of the killer sentence composition (if you read Joy's blog you know what I mean). He is unaccustomed to days on his own in there, and may have better things to do than sit around and answer the damn phone.

From there, I will be attempting to get some more background stuff. If I don't manage to get any for Wednesday (it's really a day by day thing, getting background work), I'll be coming back up here to North Hollywood, paying a visit to the call-in service peeps and finally getting signed up with them. It makes the life of someone who does this for a (meantime) living much, much easier.

Joy is in Portland, visiting her awesome bro Brian Backlash for the week. I hope she is having nine tons of fun, that the time is going nice and slow and that she comes back feeling like she got to spend a whole month away.

I'll be spending more time here while she's gone, watering all her plants and feeding any number of her pets, but I think I'll be going home for tonight in a while. My T.V. gets better reception, and Prison Break and 24 are on tonight, so. You know. I've always had my priorities straight. It is just after four now, I should be doing a vlog post in a bit.

P.S. looks like Blogger has not updated their clock for DST

In The House

I love working on a set. I love the long days, I love the actors, I love being enveloped in this other world, I love being excited about the day and my life, I love seeing and experiencing stuff that is completely unique. I love the gruff and too-cool-for-school crew, I love the happy crew, crew rules. They are so fucking great at their jobs it is insane, and you realize the Oscars and Emmys exist so that these people can get close to properly thanked. All that glitz, you realize on the set, is really the least that could be done.












I always have fun stuff I could be writing to you about these experiences... I'll be getting internet service at home again very soon and will have more time for stuff like that. (That should also mean way more frequent posts, I really do love blogging and am always wishing I could be talking to you every day. I will be doing a vlog from Joy's this weekend, so that should be fun times).