a heartbreaking work of staggering janeness

It's just before noon on a Saturday ... got a surprisingly (shockingly) early start... scowled through a bowl of cinnamon Life, checked my email and found a note from Goon telling me about a Lego recreation of Eddie Izzard's Cake or Death routine (http://youtube.com/watch?v=rZVjKlBCvhg). A nice new take on a classic.

Thought very seriously about getting back in bed... came dangerously close to getting back in bed until Monday rolled around again... but found myself in the gym, reading a magazine about Helen Mirren's choice of moisturizer and all the ways I could make my butt look like someone else's butt.

A woman was riding a stationary bike a few feet away from me, but instead of curled over it and sweating profusely like most of the Tour De France-ers who frequent my itty bitty athletic center, she was reclined all the way back and text messaging. Man, that makes me feel old. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!? I want to scream, Harlan Ellison-like, with spit flying from my mouth and veins bulging in my neck. It just looks stupid. And these text-ers never look alarmed, like they're just learning about nuclear war burgeoning in North Korea and they're furiously trying to get international news updates... just bored, glazed over, completely hypnotized by their tiny keyboard and the bright sheen of their Blackberry under gym lights.
Bleh.
I'm in a pissy mood and I probably shouldn't glare and journal about text messaging women at the gym, but what's the point of being in a thundercloud if you can't Zeus it out and throw a few lightening bolts at people?

I feel the need to quote Winnie the Pooh where he's looking for honey and bees, and he decides to go incognito as a black rain cloud or something, but I can't remember it. Which is not doing anything for my attitude problem.

I was struggling to stay focused enough on the workout... unfortunately, my text-at-the-gym wrath did not fuel my run like Easter morning, when the tv was playing Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller talking about "those moron homosexuals" in San Francisco, saying 'it wasn't up to THEM to judge,' but almost in the same breath, "wouldn't you just like to see it? Wouldn't you just like to see them turn into pillars of salt?"
THAT was a good run. For me, anyway. Those moron homophobic tele-bullies can kiss my ass, which still looks like my ass and not Helen Mirren's, despite genuine effort to get to the gym this year.

I could feel my brain getting distracted and a little panicky, so I went next door to self-medicate with my fix of choice-- caffeine. Iced coffee for the inevitable zone-out at home. I think I understand drug addicts a little more because of my introspective coffee time alone... it's probably Pavlovian, but as soon as I taste coffee, I'm transported a little bit into a 'this is my coffee buzz and you can't touch it' zone. I can only imagine what it feels like to spend you Saturday morning on meth... I can hardly handle the hypnotic effect of an iced latte when left alone.

Enough boring babble about coffee and Bill O'Reilly at the gym.

I find it interesting that the two worst days I've had to rally through to be at a can't-miss-under-any-circumstances day at work have also been 12 hr. days of intense shooting / directing / jamming wireless lavs up people's shirts and begging-- wheedling-- answers out of poor, innocent, normal people that will please the Internal Review committee, the Focus Group of snack-fed educators, and Our Cranky Customers who are liberal and conservative and obsessed with breasts. (But not in that way.)

I usually imagine that having to go to work even when it seems completely impossible would be more like the movies-- sitting at a desk and pushing folders around while looking wistfully out the window and playing montages set to music in your head.
When I get upset, I find it very hard to focus on anything-- literally getting the proper pen cap on a pen can be a difficult challenge. Yet, these are the times that I have to print out and then memorize lists from the office website that look like:

CAMERA BAG
• Camera
• 2 charged batteries
• Tripod plate
• Cleaning tape

TRIPOD

C STANDS (3)

MONITOR
• BNC cable (2)
• Electric cord (2)

FANNY PACK
• Spare batteries (4 AA, 2 9V)
• DV tapes
• Cell phone (charged)
• C-47s
• Pens/marker
• Various cable adapters
• Make-up (shine reducer, new wedges, hairspray, bobby pins)

GEAR BOX
• Microphone/windscreen
• Headphones (new)
• XLR cables (3)
• Power strip
• Electric cord (1)
• XLR cord for headphones
• Boom handle
• Lav mics w/batteries (2)
• Extra clamps
• Black blanket (steamed)
• Black blanket (extra)
• Gaffer's tape (orange and yellow)
• 15-watt bulb
• sandbags (4)

LIGHT KIT
• 2 HMI lights (600/1800)
• 2 Peppers (200 watt)
• Chimera
• Gels (full blue in pepper; 1/2 blue on hair light)
• reflector
• egg-crate
• umbrella

TALENT

• Cell phone numbers
• Release forms (adult / minor / location)
• Location contact number/staff i.d.
• Interview Questions
• Updated script (2)
• Snacks
• Food for crew/talent (5)
• Water for crew & cooler & cold packs
• Xcel sheet for good/bad takes (3)

And then it's 6 hours of saying exactly the right thing to talent to get them to say exactly the right answer for each question.
It's an out of body experience... I can't believe I can even remember these things on a good day.

We filmed for 8 hours last night on the Auraria Campus and the video studio employees couldn't have been nicer to us. Small things like that can save a girl's life. Especially if she and her two video comrades have just shlepped a light kit, camera, NTSC monitor, sandbags, gear box, etc etc etc 6 blocks through the snow to a building with no elevator. I understand why almost all producers have crazy hair, and look like they've just been in a tornado when doing an interview.

I'm reading "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and it's so good that I'm actually dragging out the last 150 pages. I keep switching to my Harlan Ellison anthology because I will be so sad when I finish AHWOSG, I really might start heading back to bed on my Saturdays. It's exactly the right book for where my brain and my heart are these days-- scattered and not really capable of processing thick literature in traditional paragraph formats. I need diagrams of house blueprints, with arrows signifying how far Dave and Toph can slide in their socked feet if they start running from the front porch. I need crushing advice as given through a Real World Casting Call interview from the early 90s.

I need someone who gives an angry but completely bitter-less monologue of finding your way through life the hard way-- the way you wish it didn't have to be, but the way that your brain is forcing you to live, whether you're up for it or not. Where hard decisions come up like waves that you turn your back on until they're slamming you, hard, into the sand and dragging you back out for more. But you don't flail in the water and give up. You just keep one eye on the shore and try to swim sideways until your inner monologue shuts up and your instincts kick in...
in the words of Dory and Nemo...
just keep swimming. just keep swimming.
just keep swimming, swimming, swimming.
what do we do?
we swim. swim. swim.

I hope their advice is right. It's all I can do right now without just sinking to the bottom and calling in 'not mentally available'' on Monday.



I want another iced coffee.
I want to remember Pooh quotes about being sad and mad and morph into a pissy little rain cloud and spit rain on some happy little city until ducks float down the street.
I want to swear because my apartment's cluttered and I'm feeling bruised everywhere and trendy magazines are telling me that coffee will give me cancer and make my face fall off.
F*ck.