Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Saturday, Oct. 26, 2002 - 5:18 a.m.

Okay. First off, I have to say that there's a smell of cat pee coming from somewhere around my computer for the last two days now, and I can't figure out where the hell it's coming from. This situation is made all the more perplexing by the fact that I do not own a cat and have not been to any places cats frequent.

In addition, there is a really annoying, sporadic, vibration-type noise coming from the weird, unfinished room on the other side of my computer wall. This is a room that for some inexplicable reason, the builder never finished, instead merely choosing to wall it up and put a fake trap door in the ceiling. (Please don't ask me to define "fake trap door.") At any rate, the fake trap door is the only way in or out of the room. Which is apparently vibrating. Have I mentioned it's really annoying? Really.

Boy, that was close. In the above paragraph, I split an infinitive. I wrote "choosing instead merely to." Can you imagine the embarrassment?

So anyway, I spent my day shooting scenes for a story in which a little boy is improperly restrained and dies in a tragic car accident.

My day starts way too freakin' early, when I have to get up after about 4.5 hours of sleep due to the flu bug and insomnia of the night before. Great. I get up at what seems an insanely ungodly hour (8am) and head off to work. As soon as I get there, I'm greeted with my wig for the day and the news the director is late. No prob for me, but the producer is a little irritated.

About an hour later - an hour which I would have loved to have slept thru - we head over to the set of our first set of shots. Me fighting injustice, me fighting apathy, me fighting big business, me fighting legislators, me fighting depression. The wig really itches, but I'm a consummate professional, so I suck it up with only the occasional comment that I really, really need to get the nylon out of my eye, and can I please please please scratch just under the edge of the damn wig, PLEASE? Luckily the director is a pretty cool guy. He says sure.

We get thru all the shots of me being depressed with a modicum of disagreement between producer and director, but when it gets to the big research scene, in which I triumphantly put together all the facts which will eventually lead to my coup d'etat, discontent comes to a head, and there's a rather unpleasant exchange between producer and director over what should be shot and how. I gaze off into the distance (in this case, the wall 8 feet away) and wish I were not in the room.

Much of the rest of the first half of the day runs in this fashion, with me as an unwitting child pawn in a slightly ugly and bitter divorce, and then we break for a "working lunch" and then bundle up and head off beyond the burbs, to shoot scenes with the little boy who plays my son and who really isn't talkative. But the director wants him to talk, so I, who have no real discernible experience with children, am trying to figure out what kind of questions you ask a retiscent 4 year old to liven him up a bit.

The story involves a motor vehicle accident, so there's a shot of me fastening the kid into the car. Problem is, the seatbelt is way too big for a 4 year old, and there's some dissention as to how this situation should be remedied. The solution? Wire the seatbelt lower to the car's frame, so it appears to fit properly. We shoot that about a bazillion times, and then it's on to the driving scene.

Now, lemme preface this next part by telling you that people in southern California can not drive in the rain. For some reason known only to God, their brains are incapable of grasping the fact that when it drizzles, the tiny bit of water which lands on the roadway completely fails to wash the oil off of it, instead forming a composition with a slickness something akin to ice. This matters not one whit to the idiot drivers in this half of the state, who refuse to surrender their right to pull out directly in front of you from a dead stop when you are doing 60.

I tell you this because it's now drizzling. And for the purposes of accuracy, I am driving a rented car. With a rented 4 year old jury-rigged into an improper restraint in the front seat. On the actual road. In what is - luckily, unbeknownst to me, because I am fairly superstitious, and it woulda whigged me out - described as unusually heavy traffic. And with a director telling me - as I'm driving - to look at the child, play with the radio, lovingly pat on the head this same child while he is sleeping, and various and sundry other attention-sucking activities.

In short, all the things you're not supposed to be doing while you're driving. In traffic. In a rented car much larger than my tiny little Honda. With a small child improperly restrained. And I have to wonder.

Am I the only person who sees the irony in this?

And that was my day.

I won't go into the sheer amount of nylon I swallowed. I think there's still some embedded in my throat.

Peace out,

Katie

0 comments so far

*HUGS* TOTAL! give katiedoyle more *HUGS*
Get hugs of your own

Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008