Today was a good day a great day a fabulous day. My fabulous new roomie and I left our fabulous new apartment in the fabulous early hours to go work out at the fabulous warehouse style gym 3 blocks away (I could easily imagine the equipment cleared and in the center of the place - a big ole boxing ring.)
And that start turned into a beautiful drive on a beautiful day with only merge traffic at the GW Bridge. I find a lot of people haven’t grasped the whole zipper effect in merging. So simple and yet so far fetched to some. They make a traffic sign with a giant zipper to put in areas of intense merge. The day was too pretty too really care and there was a fun happy bum making some bucks from his bravado for dancing in the middle of the merge.
The windows down, music up sunny day drive got me to an executive park in Fort Lee, NJ where I spent a highly entertaining 9 hours shooting background for a dunkin’ donuts commercial. The first 6 hours were spent in holding hanging with one of my fave hand model guys. One of my first jobs in the big bad city was with Jim and he really gave me a lot of fantastic advice. There were about 25 of us backgrounders dressed all in black suits with white shirts and one dude in half a chicken costume hanging around. We found a table with an impressive view of Fort Lee. Um. It was an impressive view, the building was up on the side of a mountain with huge windows…not too terribly much to look at..but impressive view of the world. The cars and building below so small and seemingly insignificant. Like you could just pick one up and toss it aside…which I would want to do later. Want to do very badly..very badly indeed.
Chris and Neil joined us and the 6 hours flew by. They were highly entertaining. I made ¾ of an ugly hat. Normally I can finish 2 or 3 on a day like that… ¾. Chris suggested I do comedy and I said I would love to though am held back because the only joke that I can remember is
”Where does the general keep his armies????”
Huh?? Huh?? You know??? Do you??? Do you
Reaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Really really know??
“in his sleevies”
yes. That is the only joke that I can remember. It is really pathetic. Horrible so. I hear a lot of jokes. A lot of jokes. And a lot of damn fine jokes. Piss yourself in hysterical laughter jokes. And I can’t remember them. Not at all. Not even a smidgen. And it does make me sad. I watched in amazed appreciation when people can just fire out jokes. It is so impressive. And there I am.. ‘general, armies, sleevies’ huh huh. Uh. Sigh.
So I’m out on the comedy.
A in the know PA walked by wearing that lovely green tee with PET SOUNDS scrolled across and all four of us responded simultaneously by either pointing, drawing out a yesssssssss, table smack of agreement or thumbs up. Then all conversation quickly deteriorated into music talk. It was great. and my new friend chris turned out to be a bass player. He’s in a band called mad larry with two of the guys from the bogmen and they pretty regularly in nYc so I’m going to go check them out in a few weeks and get a little Johnny cash rock n roll practice with the photos in. It is pretty exciting they are going to be opening for the black crowes out in vegas.
We had an amazing lunch after an incredible craft service table. They had beluga soup. What? Seriously? Yes. Beluga lentil soup and it was mmm mmmm delicious. Big hunks of brie, lots of fruit. Deeelish. Lunch..Definetly yummies there though everything is overshadowed by the strawberry shortcake they had for dessert. Oh goodness me. Mmm mmm.. haven’t had strawberry shortcake since the Newport Folk Fest with Phil and Jeff. I like strawberry shortcake a lot.
At some point late in the day I got the happy booking call. A few days ago I headed out to NJ for a go-see, who-C, you-C, me-C? for a nasal spray tv spot. It was a great hand model catch up. One of my fave girls just got engaged! Yeah – happy. So they took photos of all of us holding the product. The client needed to see whose hand made it look the right size..whatever the ‘right’ size is. Not too big…Not too small. Who knows. I had written the go-see off since it was so late in the day and I knew that the shoot was on Monday. Plus the other girls there are the tip tops and fun tippy who I shared a cab/PATH ride back with has simply incredible nails. They are amazing. She is a fun one. Makes me realize how little I know about fashion. I really should probably…maybe? be better at it. I don’t know. I just don’t know about bag names or labels beyond shirt/pant/dress. I was recruited to help pick a pair of shoes to go with a beautiful sounding dress…metal colored dress. That’s all I got. I didn’t get the descriptions..nor did I understand the descriptions of the shoes. I just picked the ostrich ones because –hey – ostrich. Right. Sounds like something. Um. Maybe I should learn about fashion. Though I guess I am one step above tard. At least I don’t wear bedroom slippers in place of shoes. I bet her feet feel good all the time.
To sum up – I am bad at fashion.
So back to the day …Eventually we were brought onto set where they placed us around a control tower type of room and as this guy shouted GO!GO!GO! we all had to hustle and bustle frantically about, pointing out this and grabbing that phone and GO!GO!GO! nonstop action. I flapped my arms about in one rehearsal and they called it a perfect commotion take so I took that to mean that I should flap my arms in every take while scurrying about. It was fun and quite an energy rush racing all about, a far cry from the shoot last week where I actually had to cry. Tonight was fun. And quick. They shot that from a wide angle about 7 times and then they let 20 people go and they reshot tighter on the principles with the 5 of us scurrying about. I made sure to flap my arms again. I think I like to flap my arms. They shot that and it was a wrap. The incredible view from the holding area showed the unfortunate sight of far too many of those little cars all stopped, not flowing into the GWbridge lanes as I had hoped they would be. Traffic flowed in all other directions. Everywhere except NY. Miraculously the locations guy showed up and gave me a run down on the roads after I showed him the incredible traffic vantage point we were at. You could actually see ALL the roads from where we stood. He agreed with my statement of GW-Bad after assessing the situation and pointed out which road I should aim for. In the parking lot, nancita computer confirmed some directions for me and then as I was pulling out of the exec parking lot, a traffic helper guy (I don’t know if he was actually one though he became one. He had a car with yellow flashy lights so I waved at him and asked him out to get to NJtrpk. He got onboard with the mission and drove me to the entrance of it. Hells yeah. Go traffic helper guy. The roads wuz confusin’ and I woulda gotten lost. So there I was crusin’ right away from all that traffic right on down the turnpike heading for my favored route to the city, the Holland tunnel. I like it. It is the way I remember entering the city on a bus with my mom when I was little. Every year we would come to visit my grandparents and every year I was dragged along to the window displays. Odd how things change. Now I love the window displays. I love Rockefeller center. I love the tree.
Anyway…so the drive back to the city was smooth sailing and I got to try the route from the willyB to my fabulous new apartment. I’ve got a vague sense of the area and turned out that was all I needed and in no time at all I was pulling into rawkstar parking directly in front of my fabulous new apartment.
If anyone has TEVO capabilities and can capture this spot, I'd love LOVE love to have a copy!!!