If he can fire Tom Cruise, he can fire us too.

Tomorrow, we're shooting in the Paramount theater, and we rigged it today, but we could only do part of the work because tonight, Sumner Redstone himself will be at a cocktail party and screening in said theater, so we had to make doubly sure everything that we could put in got taped down really well - since Sumner taking a header because we didn't secure our equipment is a hilarious mental picture ("So then I said to Cruise that he should take a long walk off a ... woah!"), but would immediately result in all of us on the bread line.

Of course, this is a warm fuzzy fantasy for our little rigging crew - if we get fired, we can go and work another job without burning a bridge, so the running joke of the day was that we were going to "accidentally" clothesline Mr. Redstone and inhale the sweet air of freedom.

Last night was also the second night in a row that I've not been able to sleep at all - I get tired, but as soon as I go to bed I'm wide awake and stare at the ceiling all night. By today, the sleep deprivation made everything sort of furry. I've been laughing at jokes I know suck, and the whole 'trip up Sumner' running joke made me giggle so hard my purloined iced tea (when the craft service guy's back was turned) came out my nose.

After we spent 2 hours taping down all the cables under the tables (since we had to power the table lamps), the set designer waltzed in and announced that all of the tables would be moved back 10 feet first thing in the morning.

We're coming in at 6, and the shooting crew are coming in at nine. In the space of three hours we have to: move ALL the table power, finish the rig (because we have to tear some more stuff out of the set they were using today), and move all of first units carts from the stage to the theater.

Fun stuff. I'm going to give in and take a sleeping pill, otherwise I'll probably hallucinate tomorrow.

Couch of the Day:

Meet the new camera

My poor little Fuji Finepix. It took a hell of a beating for just over a year, but this morning when I whipped it out to take a couch photo, the zoom motor made a horrible noise and then died.

So I bought a Nikon Coolpix L3, on the recommendation of the very nice salesman who told me the Nikons are a bit more durable than Fuji cameras.

As of right now, I'm not completely in love with the interface, but since it's a Best Buy purchase I have 14 days to return it. I was veerrry tempted by the top-of-the line credit card sized Olympus that can be dropped from 5 feet and dunked in water without any damage (and has a correspondingly eye-popping price tag). Hey, Olympus? If you send me one for free I'll promo the hell out of it for you.

I can't always get what I want. Oh, well.

So, I tested Mr. Nikon out at Broad Beach (in super-scenic Mel-ibu), which is where I spent my Labor Day:



And here's one more of Malibu (this was taken a bit further south):



Aaaand one of the cat, who's very angry with me about my interrupting her cricket hunt (they're hiding in the recycling basket), and is giving me the stink-eye:



I may not like the interface that much, but for a sub-two hundred dollar camera, this thing's got a kickass lens.

Color me crabby

In case you haven't noticed, I've not been in the best mood lately.

The stench of absolutely mind-numbing stupidity is hanging over this show, and just like the vomit, we can't seem to pinpoint the exact cause. It's not us, it's not any of the other below the line departments, and the few producers I've met seem pretty sharp, so it can't be them. It's coming from somewhere up high though - and since shit does like to roll downhill we're catching the tail end of it.

Today, we had to rig a new stage but were forbidden by the production office from renting any new equipment. That meant we had to go into a standing set*, tear out the things we needed, make copious notes about what we'd taken and from where (because we have to put it all back next week), haul the stuff to the other stage and rig it. Then my boss got called upstairs (into the production office) for a talking-to about us not working fast enough ("Do you understand how valuable this company's time is worth? Do you?").

Jeebus.

Stupidity and frustration are bedfellows - when people start having to work twice as hard because of a series of bad decisions by the folks wearing $800 suits, it starts to wear on the nerves.

Everyone on the show is cranky as hell - people are snapping at each other, constantly threatening to quit and today the first unit best boy yelled at my boss over, well, nothing (the first unit best boy's normally a really great guy - he's just closer to the stupid than we are, and it's turning him into Mr. Cranky Pants).

But it's not just production. There's something else going on, and I can't put my finger on it (of course, I'm on the bottom rung of the ladder so there's a lot that I don't hear about).

Maybe our stage is haunted. Maybe the layout of the furniture in the sets forms some satanic mandala that's making our footsteps churn out a constant cloud of acrimony.


You know what? I'm going with that theory. I blame set dressing - I bet they think it's funny. I can just picture them, driving away at night, snickering: "Hee hee... this one's going to give them all cold sores! Haw haw haw!!" (Please note that I really like our set dressers, even though I can totally picture them doing something like this).

They laid off the rigging crew on Tuesday (we're off on Monday anyway due to the holiday), so I took a call on another show for that day.

It'll be a nice break. I might even crack a smile.


* A standing set is one which is used very often, so it's never stripped out when we leave. It just, well, stands there when we're not using it.

Couch of the Day: