Enjoy reading this while I'm standing in a shit-splattered downtown alley all night

Working all night fries me, so I can't think right now.

Although I normally ignore meme's, here's a one courtesy of Shane Nickerson.

It'll have to hold you until tomorrow (or the day after).

4 things about Los Angeles

Four Jobs I've Had In My Life in LA:

Set Lighting Technician

Bartender at a celeb-infested night club

Platform model for a hair product company (this entails standing on a stage in front of hundreds of people at a hair show while being given a terrible haircut and being expected to smile)

I don't know if this counts, but once I applied to be a tour guide at Universal Studios. They turned me down because I was too cynical.

Four Movies About LA I Could Watch Over And Over:

LA Confidential
Chinatown
LA Story
Pulp Fiction

Four Places I've Lived All Over L.A. (With Food Memories From Each):

Culver City: Childhood memories of standing in line at Tito's Taco's. I could never get my tacos fast enough. I loved those tacos so much as a child, and now they make me sick.

San Fernando Valley: There was (and presumably still is) a really fancy hillside restaurant called "The Odyssey". It was the first time I ever went to a fancy place, and it was always an occasion, although I don't really remember the food.

Silverlake-ish: The food booths at the Sunset Junction Street Fair every August - bands, crafts, everyone I knew was there, and despite the fact that it was boiling hot, TONS of great food.

Pre-gentrification Hollywood: Those ratty (and so very wonderful) Thai places along Hollywood Boulevard. They were all great and dirt cheap.

Four LA-Themed Shows I Love(d) To Watch:

Entourage
Police Woman
Arrested Development
Animaniacs

Four Places I Would Vacation At In LA:

A garden cottage at the Chateau Marmont hotel
Deep Creek Hot Springs
Catalina
Malibu

Four Of My Favorite Foods Found In LA:

The secret sushi place I'll never tell any of you about.
Pink's Hot Dogs
Anything at Real Food Daily
Steaks and martinis at Mastros

Four Places In LA I Would Rather Be Right Now:

Burke Williams
The swimming pool at the Peninsula Hotel
Drinking tea in the garden at the Chateau Marmont (and posting this via the free wireless there)
The beach in front of David Geffen's house

It's all in the eyes.

I have come to the conclusion that I'm mildly doll-phobic (is it possible to have a mild phobia?).

I seem to remember not even liking dolls when I was of the age to be playing with them.

I found a box of dolls in my closet that I've had since childhood (they were wrapped in an issue of the Los Angeles Times circa 1979), and when I called my older sister to find out what they were and where they'd come from, she said she didn't remember but thought they were probably valuable.

Since my sister has the worst financial sense in the world (but if I just threw them out she'd turn out to be right and they'd be worth a fortune), I decided to get them appraised.

As I stood there in the doll shop (grossest toy? Stuffed rabbits covered with real rabbit fur. Eeeeewww), looking around and waiting for the appraiser to finish the longest phone call in the world, I felt my skin start to crawl.

It's the eyes. Those horrible little eyes that seem to get stuck halfway open in some sort of demonic wink ("Ha ha! Just you wait! We'll kill you in your sleep!").

Gah. I'm creeping myself out just typing about it.

Anyways, my dolls were gas station giveaways from the 1970's (buy a tank of gas, get a doll), and, according to the appraiser, aren't worth anything.

"Aren't worth anything as in try to get a buck for them on eBay, or aren't worth anything as in give them to my friend's kid to destroy?" I asked.

"Give them to your friend's kid. I doubt they'll ever be worth anything."

After the kid breaks them I'll have the immense satisfaction of knowing that those creepy little heads are going to end up in a landfill.

Ha!

On a lighter note, at a get-together last night I discovered a pretty decent sulfite-free red wine (most sulfite-free reds taste like ass, but it's the sulfites that give me the terrible red wine headache). It's called "Our Daily Red" and since I love red wine but hate the headache, I'm going to buy a case of it.

I knew should have plied her with liquor first.

Yesterday, The Blonde and I were shooting some short pieces at one of the Oscar (tm) giveaway parties. These invitation-only parties take place in hotels (they take over an entire floor and set up in the suites - each company gets it's own suite) and give products away to folks who can promote them (actors, actresses, nominees, producers, important people).

It's mostly cosmetics, clothing, jewelry, and shoes (although there were a lot of baby clothes, which they kept trying to give me - even though I'm pretty certain my cat would not appreciate being dressed in a pink hoodie), but in one suite a company was giving away sex toys.

Cool, modern-looking, beautifully designed sex toys given out by an affable German Guy (also very, very cute although I remember thinking that he was probably gay) and a smiling, happy press rep.

We arranged to shoot in their suite and interview them about their products - I thought I could get The Blonde to do a couple of PG-rated jokes, and we'd have a few funny wraparounds*.

We got German Guy to agree, and as soon as the camera started to roll, he launched into a sales pitch about the products, where everything's made (Germany, of course), what each one was and why they're superior to other sex toys, etc... standard sales-pitch stuff, and not sexual in nature at all. He was really hyping the quality of the products and the durability.

As soon as he started his spiel, The Blonde froze.

I mean completely froze - the only reason I knew she wasn't dead was because she would blink every few seconds, while an increasingly desperate German Guy tried pick up the slack by being informative, cheerful and non-threatening.

From behind the camera, I smiled and flapped my hands in what I thought was a gesture conveying happiness and fun in an attempt to get her to do something - anything - other than stand there, stock still and dead silent with a horrified look on her face, clutching a very expensive dildo.

After I'd given up and called cut, German Guy told me he thought he came off as rushed.

What I wanted to say was "Well, you only seemed rushed because you were standing next to someone who was catatonic, so I don't know if I'd worry about it."

What I actually said was "Oh, no! You were terrific! I wish everyone we'd interviewed today was half as much fun!"

Later, she told me that the whole suite just creeped her out, although it seemed to me that they'd really tried to make the vibe in their room non-creepy - the company's logo was bright orange, the sales reps were smiling and happy, and they were even giving away really good German chocolate for those who didn't want the proffered bags of free sex toys.

I suppose this would be a good place to mention that a decade of hearing 'boy talk' in the truck has left me incredibly blasé about sexual topics in general, although most of the time I'd rather not hear the graphic description of what one of my co-workers would really like to do to that stripper.


* A wraparound is the name for the little shots that air right before and after the commercials.

When all else fails, confuse the hell out of them.

In parts of Los Angeles, a movie shooting will draw a bigger crowd than in other parts.

In the heavily 'shot' parts of town, passers-by are more likely to shout obscenities than they are to placidly stand there, watching and waiting for something to happen.

Some of us, of course, make a beeline for the trucks to see if anyone we know is working and if they're picking up crew.

Yesterday, as I was walking down Melrose Ave (near the Pacific Design Center), I noticed a crowd gathering - as I got closer, I saw that it was folks watching a movie set.

This behavior on the part of West Hollywood passers-by is not normal - Melrose is a heavily shot area, and since I didn't hear shouts of "Fuck you, assholes!" and "Go to hell!", I figured that:

a) something horrible had just happened, or

b) someone really, really famous was standing there.

Sure enough - there, on the corner, waiting for them to roll was Big Action Star.

"Well, that explains the crowd", I said to myself* as I started to walk towards the lighting department's stakebed.

I was stopped by security.

"Big Action Star isn't signing autographs, Miss."

"Good for him - I'm just trying to get to the truck so I can give the best boy a card."

He had to think about what I'd just said for a moment.

"Why? Is it his birthday?"

Awesome.

They're not picking up crew, though.

Damn.


*I'm talking to myself with alarming frequency these days. All I need now is a beehive hairdo and 50 cats.

A big welcome..

To any new readers coming from People Magazine (don't get excited, it's just the industry-only Oscar-week daily), and Forbes Online.

The blog's a bit boring right now, as work is slow, but feel free to peruse the archives and tell me how full of shit I am.

I live for that.

Not what I wanted to hear, but it could have been worse.

The visit to the podiatrist was enlightening.

I got the reader-predicted advice to stretch more (apparently my Achilles tendons are 'incredibly tight' and it's the source of many of my problems), fitted for new orthotics, a lecture about not letting the tread on my work shoes wear down so much, and an injection of cortisone into a cyst (that hurt like hell and I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling - I didn't want the elderly woman in the next room to think I was a wimp).

The bad news is that I'm going to have to have the bunion surgery.

Not right now, thankfully. There's a predicted SAG strike next year, so I'll do the surgery then, since the doctor told me I'll be out of work for at least 8 weeks.

If I've got to be out of work for 8 weeks, it may as well be in the middle of what may very well be a protracted work stoppage.