I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

I hadn’t been on a big call in quite some time, but this one wasn’t half bad. Or maybe I just kick into survival mode and somehow the massive throng of extras ceases to bother me. Or maybe it was because I now know that if I forget everything else, I must bring a coat and a book to read. Those were my saviors this time.

I was part of a gay pride parade. WooHoo! This is why I love extra work. It exposes me to things I might never have experienced otherwise…

I got to wear most of my own clothes. They gave me a totally awesome burgundy tanktop that fit me like a glove. I brought a very loud pair of pink/purple floral bellbottoms. They put a pink bandana on my head and I put on my burgundy Chuck Taylors. I was all set. I whipped out Crazy Wild by Tara Janzen and turned to page one.

Shoots in downtown LA can be hell sometimes. Usually just getting there is an adventure in itself. This one wasn’t so bad because I didn’t have to be there until noon and most of the traffic had dissipated by then.

After chowing down a doughnut, I boarded a people mover to the set. We sat in holding for a little while and I read a few more chapters. (The book kicks ass! I read Crazy Hot when I was on Numb3rs… The whole book. In one day. I hadn’t done that since high school. It was sooooo good.)

Then, it was time to shine… I grabbed my army green coat and readied my best, “Don’t worry, I’ll stash it when we’re rolling” line for when the costumers inevitably requested I leave it in holding. (I never leave it in holding because then I literally freeze…and that makes me an unhappy extra. There’s only one thing more annoying than an extra: a grumpy one!) Over the years, I’ve mastered the art of hiding a jacket on set where the camera can’t see it.

Initially, I was marching in the parade, but they needed more spectators and I got moved to the sidewalk. That was fine with me. I’ve spent my share of gigs walking forward, resetting, walking forward, resetting, walking forward, resetting. Standing in one spot sounded pretty good to me. I read a few more chapters and huddled in my coat while newbie extras looked on in silent (and some not-so-silent) envy. The serious ones will learn and adapt. I wasn’t the only one with a coat or a book, but as far as I could see, I was the only one who’d brought both!

All in all, not a bad day. The costumes were colorful. The gay pride was contagious. I had a blast!

Yes, I saw Adam Sandler and Kevin James. They were at the front of the parade waving at everyone.

Between takes, I was talking to the girl next to me and as Adam walked by, he added a line to our conversation and we both thought that was really nifty cool. And then it hit me…

I got in my wayback machine and a certain incident washed over me in frightening waves…

About six or seven years ago, I was a seatfiller at a bunch of awards shows: at one of which, Adam Sandler was there to either present or receive. Being a good little seatfiller, I went into a row where there was an empty seat. The people around the empty seat said that the person sitting there would be right back. I replied that I’d sit there until that person returned. That was my job. Well, when the guy returned, the commercial break was just about over and I had to make my way out of the row.

Which, oddly included getting past Adam Sandler. He’d shown up and sat down while I was in the row. Now, normally I’m very sure on my feet and I stealthily slide past everyone else in the row. Well…not this one time. Nope.

I tripped.

And did a face plant right into Adam Sandler’s lap. Literally. Like, he was wearing beige pants and my forehead was somewhere near the button on his waistband. I still remember the horror…even as I’m writing this, I can still see the cotton fabric and the pocket.

I have never been so embarrassed in my entire life.

He looked at me like I was insane. I felt like I was insane. Apologizing profusely, I regained my footing and got the hell out of there as fast as I could. I really wanted to dig a hole and crawl into it. I was honestly that embarrassed. It didn’t even matter who he was. Tripping that hard into any guy’s lap is a mortifying experience for me if I don’t already know the guy!

I’m just glad to see that I didn’t crash and burn so hard that he remembered me and ran away screaming while on the set of this movie.

A little more Leeloo

I gotta limber up again for these last couple pics… Let me put my corset on, too…

Special thanks to Lawrence M. Green for taking this pic of my stretching out. He was always at rehearsals helping out with whatever we needed and I truly appreciate all his hard work.

Okay, now to WorldCon, waiting to head over to the Masquerade. Chaz (aka Hazel) shot the following pics, too. I swear if he hadn’t been there, I might not have had any documentation of me in my costume. Thanks, Chaz! 🙂

Jason was nice enough to go with me…

I was kind of nervous, and by this point very tired. The nervousness was more like an old friend to me, though. Back when I did a lot of theatre, even though I was running the light board, or sound board, or pulling the grand curtain, or running a followspot, or being ‘the person who clipped in Judas before he hung himself in Act II’, I always got a twinge of nervous energy. When the audience was ready to be entertained and it was my job to support the entertainers, there was a certain thrill in that. And this time, I was actually an entertainer!

My number one goal–one that’d measure the amount of success I had on stage–was to not fall off the stage. It’s no secret that I can’t dance, so as long as I just did the best I could and most of all, had fun, I’d be fine so long as I didn’t fall off the stage. It was a pretty good drop and I didn’t want to get hurt. In all honesty, I have no idea if I did the routine correctly. The darn wig killed my peripheral vision, so I have no clue how I did. But even if I screwed up, I did it with gusto. I did it like I meant it and I had fun while doing it. And no, I did not fall off the stage. Therefore, in my own mind, I was a huge success!

And there’s just this funny thing about cancan dancing…and wearing a cancan dress. It made me do something I would never do in my regular life. I always had this strange compulsion to hike up my skirt! Even before going on stage to dance, I must’ve flashed the entire audience. Guys took pictures and I proudly held up my skirt. I dunno what came over me. While wearing a cancan skirt, all I wanted to do was hold it up. That, in itself, was a little adventurous experience for me…

There you have it. I…as Leeloo from the Fifth Element…danced the cancan at Worldcon 2006.

Up next… I…as the non-skirt-holding-up car chick I really am…remove an intake manifold in about twenty minutes just to prove I can do it. Although putting it back on took a little longer…

Cancan Leeloo…

Let me warm up a little…

A little more. I was at the center of the cancan dance finale, so I had to limber up a bit more than I already was.

Okay, now let me get into my costume. This is a dress rehearsal.

Colleen, Amy, Maria, Myself and Wendy… We were the dancers of L’Etoile Rouge.

My costume isn’t even all the way together at this point. The 20 safety pins holding my suspenders up didn’t show up in the pics, but you can kind of see the sides flying off in the breeze. As a geeky costumer thing that doesn’t show in the pics either, I built the suspenders out of two pieces of vinyl. The front from shoulder to bottom of skirt and halfway around is one piece and so is the back. Yeah, royal pain in the ass, but ultimate challenge at which I succeeded! (Can you tell I surprised even myself?! I’d never worked with vinyl before.)

Notice my lack of rhythm? If I wasn’t holding my skirt so high, you’d see that I had a big grin on my face. I can’t dance, but I sure can smile!

I built my stockings… To give you an idea of how tough they were, imagine working with a fabric so stretchy and sheer that no less than twenty times, I had to disentangle it from my coverlock machine. I only had to cut the fabric out of the machine once, though. The needles would go right through it and hang up and snag and piss me off!!!! Grrr… I still shudder at the memories. The stockings turned out great, but in my opinion, they were kinda hinky. I was just very lucky that they turned out as well as they did.

Okay, remember I said I was the center of the finale? There isn’t a pic of the fantastic tableau at the end, but here’s an action shot. Yes, that’s my foot in my hand and my leg is straight. I’m also wearing a corset under the dress. Yeah, ouch… But I did it!!!!!!! Not bad for a gal with zero dance experience, huh? Oh and did I mention that I spun around and then switched legs and spun again?

I tell ya, I love a good challenge and this adventure afforded me several. There are so many things about it that I just can’t believe I did! Too many to count. The experience was downright incredible as far as learning about sewing, designing, thinking ahead, dancing and driving (I had to drive an hour each way for rehearsals.).

Special thanks to Chaz (aka Hazel) for snapping these pics and letting me post them here.

Otherness: Rift is now available!

In celebration of my first solo novel being released from Samhain Publishing, I’m posting a somewhat cancan-Leeloo-related pic.

This was the day that my best friend Eddie went with me to Hollywood to get an orange wig. Leeloo’s hair isn’t traffic cone orange and this was the only non-traffic-cone-orange wig on the Boulevard it seemed. No, I didn’t wear the peacock outfit to Hollywood, I bought it there, though. I love vintage shops…

Yeah, in this pic, the wig is too long to be Leeloo from the Fifth Element. My hairdresser did an awesome job hacking the wig into shape, but you’ll see her masterful handywork when I get the Leeloo pics up.

I’ve already got a set of sleeves lined up to put onto the peacock jumpsuit. Now, if I could just find the time to do it…

This last weekend was spent working on my car. Jason made the mistake of not believing me when I said, “Shit, I can take that intake off in about twenty minutes.” He didn’t challenge me to do it, but I still felt the need to prove that I could. I’ll be posting those pics as soon as I choose the better ones. And, yes, I did it in about twenty minutes. Neither of us had looked at the clock because it hadn’t been a real challenge, so I don’t know down to the second how long it took me.

Jericho (1)

When I found out my call time was 6PM, I assumed it was going to be a late night. Since crew call had been 9AM, I knew I wouldn’t be there all night, but definitely late because it was a Friday.

I arrived at the parking lot and hopped on a shuttle. No surprises there. The driver and his friend were talking about a friend of theirs who was having girlfriend trouble and I really, really, really wanted to pipe up/offer advice/commiserate, but I refrained. I’m just an extra…

That night, I was going to be a townsperson. The wardrobe was supposed to be rundown small town casual given the premise of the show. I was in heaven because, for me, that meant even though it was a night shoot, I wasn’t going to freeze! This was one of those calls when spaghetti strap mini-dresses weren’t what all the girls were supposed to wear and goodness was I thankful.

In fact, when I went through the wardrobe line, she loved what I was already wearing. I didn’t even have to unzip my bag. My dirty-grey Levi’s, shaggy blue shirt with lightly frayed flannel shirt are usually the costumer’s delight when I play downscale characters.

Anyhow, after that, we were herded into holding and I busted out my Palm Pilot and wireless keyboard to get a little writing done. (I wanted to really dissect my stunt driving school experiences and writing them down is the best way for me to do that. Plus, I wanted to cull my notes for Book Two of my Otherness Series]).

I ended up tickling my keyboard for about three hours before the PA came back and signed us out. Apparently they were going so slow that night that they weren’t even going to get to our scene. No worries. I got paid a full day’s wage for doing all that writing. I can’t complain about that.

Plus, the people on this show were really awesome. They even let us have pizza from the craft service table. All in all, a great night. It would’ve been nice to work on set, but whatever. At that point, I was pretty into my writing, so I wasn’t upset about not getting to work. Besides, this makes up for some of those days that are non-stop, never-get-to-sit-down, action. Life is great. I can’t wait until my next gig!

Cancan, part 1

I gotta start at the beginning when it comes to my cancan adventure. Not that starting at the beginning will make the adventure more understandable, but I like to think it helps.

I get this call from a friend of mine, “Hey, would you mind putting on some fancy clothes and having your picture taken? It’s for the Hugos.”

I reply, “Ummm…yeah, okay, sure.” and head down to the LASFS clubhouse with a pile of gowns and a couple of oddities. They loved the get-up I’d built for the 1999 Grammys for when I was a seatfiller.

And quite frankly, I love it, too. I rarely wear it because I really gotta have a reason to. It’s bright teal velvet and never fails to stop traffic because it’s so unique. When I designed it, there wasn’t supposed to be a shawl, but while sewing the neckline, I screwed up. By that point, there was no turning back. All I could do was hide my mistake by piecing together my scraps into the shawl. In the end, I’d created a sort of superhero look, but I still think it kicks ass.

This was probably the closest I’d get to having a Hugo of my very own…and how cool is it that I got to pretend they were magical weapons? (Or at least that’s what was going through my mind as I posed. I was conjuring a Hugo rocket-powered forcefield or something!)

Anyhow, during the course of this mini-adventure, Maria randomly asked, “Do you dance? …Or…wait…would you like to dance? You can sew and we’re doing a halftime show in the Masquerade at WorldCon. It’s a lot of fun and we make our dresses. Wanna do it?” (Or something like that. I just remember she kept describing it long after I’d stopped truly comprehending what she was saying. I was stuck trying to wrap my brain around dancing in front of people while wearing some kind of costume that I would build.)

And then this little thought goes through my head: “How utterly strange to be asked. When else would I ever be asked to participate in such an adventure? I should do it. I can’t dance, but so what. This’ll be fun, a great experience and probably an even better story to tell.”

In the end, Maria (second from the right) and Wendy (second from the left) roped me in and I’m so glad they did. The experience was everything I’d hoped for and more…it gave me a good excuse to put my yoga flexibility to work.

Y’know, putting this entry together makes me want to dust off some of my other clothes and snap some more shots. I wish there were more hours in a day.

Special thanks to Chaz Baden (aka Hazel) for all the wonderful pics.

I sucked…hard…No, really…really…

The title of this entry is absolutely accurate.

However, as much as I hate to admit that I sucked, it also doesn’t matter that I sucked. In fact, sucking allowed me to do more than if I’d nailed it.

What is “it” you ask?

Stunt Driving School. (Yes, I really did suck at it. Me, with all my cars and working on them, too. Yes, me. I sucked. Hard. I can’t believe it either…Well, maybe I can.)

Honestly, it wasn’t that I couldn’t drive. It was my stupid brain that kept making me do everything at once, rather than finding the right cadence. In essence, I was just too nervous. I wanted to do soooooo well that my very own desire to kick ass hindered my performance.

Not to mention that I ended up too girly to get the rear wheels locked up every time. I tried to use the one car with the foot brake, but I eventually bruised my foot because I’d stood on the pedal so hard so many times.

But y’know, none of any of my reasons for failure matters because I learned a helluva lot about driving and about myself. And honestly, if I hadn’t sucked, I wouldn’t have gotten to know the teacher and his assistants so well. They’re such a great group of guys. Really top notch in everything. Always willing to help and even answered stupid questions for researching some of the stunts in Driven to Distraction.

Bottom line, the teacher saw that underneath all my sucking, I really did want to learn and I had a passion for cars. He tried everything he could think of in order to get me to stop sucking, but I just somehow couldn’t. Still, he saw through.

And gave me an opportunity to take the class again.

I still sucked…just not as hard. I still learned a helluva lot more, too. And because I’d bruised my foot during the first class, I had to use the cars with the hand brake instead. I still had trouble getting a good lock up, sometimes, but I definitely did better overall.

A few of the highlights are as follows:

~ When my teacher successfully pissed me off enough to get a good pull on the hand brake and I did a nearly perfect sliding 90 box park.
~ In the middle of the second day when my teacher looked me straight in the eye and said, “You’re starting to get it.” (In that instant, I swear I almost cried.)
~ During lunch when he took me out in my Viper and got it up to 130 before running out of stopping distance.

The experience and adventure was absolutely incredible.

I’ll definitely be back. I gotta quit sucking one of these days and pass the darn class!

…Although, it seems I learned more by doing poorly. Hmmmm… Maybe I should keep sucking after all…

I’m like totally fer sure

Over the weekend, I got to see Berlin in concert. I had a fantastic time.

More importantly, I got to wear a ‘like totally’ 80s dress.

Which reminded me that I really gotta take more pictures.

Bones

Night shoot. Well, kinda. More like a get-there-before-dark-and-leave-when-it’s-still-dark. Usually night shoots last until the sun comes up.

Anyhow, I was a ‘fight club patron with car’. I gladly brought my Viper.

After misjudging traffic by more than an hour (I’m still shocked that the Sepulveda pass was not utterly jammed at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon), I parked my car and sat in it for about a half hour before heading to base camp. This was one of those rare occasions when they say there’ll be a shuttle from parking to base camp, but there isn’t. And then it didn’t matter because base camp was about a block away. I’ve walked further to catch shuttles.

Okay, now, as an extra there are a few events right at the beginning of the shoot which can make or break the experience. This show, made it. Oh hell yeah.

I was walking with another guy who’d been early. When we got into base camp, there was a friendly-looking guy making what to the street racer world is the spinning finger circle denoting that there’s a cop nearby, but in Hollywood, that’s the signal that the camera’s rolling, so be quiet and stay still until the moment passes (can be as long as maybe ten minutes, but is usually somewhere just under a minute). Then, the fellow showed us to where holding was–and sounded welcoming. Weird. Extras are usually treated like a necessary evil.

From that first moment, myself and the guy I’d walked in with agreed that this was going to be a pretty good night. We hadn’t been to the set yet, but if one person was that cool toward extras, there’d likely be lots more.

Our call time coincided with the end of the lunch break, but the extras got to go through the chow line, too. Awesome, awesome, awesome. If I’d’ve known, I wouldn’t’ve eaten before I came. (See, I’m really not used to being treated so well.)

I survived wadrobe by having to change into what I thought was one of the least likely things I’d brought: my violet/black vinyl snakeskin pants, burgundy tank top and black burn-through velvet blouse. That meant that while my shoulders would freeze, my legs would bake. Believe me, that was a billion times better than a spaghetti strap minidress. Night calls get cold no matter what time of year it is.

Anyway, I spent the down time reading a book about the Hundred Years War while in holding.

Funny thing, though, I got to see something I’d never seen before… While in holding, we could see through windows out into the warehouse where there was an SUV parked between two screens. What looked like a suburban neighborhood scrolled by, projected on both sides as though the SUV was in motion.

Not that I didn’t know about the technique, I’d just never seen it done. Being that close to it was kinda disorienting, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world. Weird, but nifty. I love Hollywood.

Anyway, when the time came, I went out to bring my Viper around and was directed to park it near the entrance. I’m still amazed that I got it shoe-horned into the tiny spot they wanted it. Thankfully, they never treated me like ‘a girl’. Sometimes, when I’m in any of my cars, I get treated like I can’t drive before I’ve even proven myself. It’s just like when I get asked if my ’68 Mustang Fastback is my boyfriend’s or husband’s car. Grrrr… Anyway, the guys on this show seemed to accept me for me and that was awesome.

The 2nd AD was very thorough with us extras. Admittedly, he did have a lot of time to place us, but it was really nice of him to walk us through our crosses and make sure we knew what he wanted to see out of us. That was nice. Consequently, we didn’t get yelled at, we got directed during the shooting.

The scene was about three minutes and all of us extras just had long crosses through the parking lot into the warehouse. Simple stuff, but stretched out over a long time.

Both the big stars were there. I know my best friend was jealous that I’d get to see David Boreanaz again. (I was on Angel a few years ago.) He’s so friggin’ hot.

And I almost ran him over after I was instructed to move my car. There just wasn’t a whole lot of clearance between one of the trucks and the corner of the building. It wasn’t a near-miss or anything. He and the other actor he was walking with yielded and I waved my thanks. I was a little terrified, but whatever. I had to get my car parked and run back to set.

But the parking structure was closed. And there was nothing but red curbs near base camp.

I finally got the last spot after moving a traffic cone that I nearly didn’t see and almost ran over. By the time I hoofed it back to base camp, the 2nd AD was wrapping various people. I was gladly one of them. WooHoo! I got to go home after a short day–well, night.

Great gig. I wish more were like this one.

It’s officially official!

I’m officially booked in for stunt driving school at the end of this month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m also still in shock.

I mean, when I was a little girl I said, “Some day, I wanna go to stunt driving school.” But I never thought I’d ever get to go.

And here I am, less than three weeks away and I’m still not sure if I really am going. I mean, it was a dream…something to give me hope, a goal to work toward. It wasn’t supposed to actually happen!

Now I just hope that the reality is even better than the dream!

(I’m bettin’ it will be. I love cars. I love driving and drifting. This is gonna be so friggin’ awesome!!!!!)

I guess I’ll let you know in early October…a few weeks before Otherness: Rift is released from Samhain Publishing.

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