Normal Happenings

Ok, I know I have been slacking on posting. I'm not even going to lie, I've just been lazy! Thanks for getting me in line Danni, haha. It's weird because it takes the biggest effort for me to start a post, but when I do actually start, I get really into it and then it ends up being 8 million pages long. I'm slowly phasing out doing background, so who knows what I will talk about in my blog in the future! It's been the "interesting" part of my blog I think. We'll see.

So, I worked on the show ER last week and here is an amusing story. Back in August, I met this girl. She is 18. I don't even know her real name because I have a nickname for her. I call her "mischievous". I started out as a joke, but the name stuck, so that's what I call her. I had seen her a few times on some other sets back in November and December. But, until last week, I hadn' t seen her since then. I think it will be funnier if I post our conversation, rather than describe it:

me: Hey mischievous, it's been a while. Isn't this where I met you?

her: (hugs me) Yeah! Wait a minute, did you just call me "promiscuous"?

me: No, no. I would never call you that. I called you "mischievous", like always.

her: Oh, ok. I don't even know what "promiscuous" means. I just know that song by Nelly Furtado and Timbaland.

me: haha....well, ask one of these ladies around you.

her: I don't know what "mischievous" means either.

me: All this time and you never knew?? It means you're bad, you start trouble, etc.

her: Oh, well what does promiscuous mean?

me: Ask someone.

(I start to walk away)

her: (yelling) CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT PROMISCUOUS MEANS?!?!?!

random lady: SLUTTY! IT MEANS SLUTTY!

I have to admit, it was pretty funny. Nothing else terribly exciting happened that day except for one of the PA's telling us to walk briskly through the scene and a guy asked me if that means fast or slow. Hey, you can't know everything all the time, right? lol

Later in this week I was on a new pilot called Supreme Courtships. The only person I recognized there was Shane West, who ironically played a doctor on ER. This was being shot in downtown LA and I had to drive right through skid row to get there. Has anyone heard of "skid row" in Los Angeles? It's an area of downtown that is basically really run down. There are so many homeless people and there is garbage everywhere. I mean EVERYWHERE! Like all over the ground. It's a sad sight to see. I was also on Close to Home again this same week. Typical day except I got to drive my car through a scene. Fun.

Working at the gym has been kind of fun. For the first time since I moved here, I can go to a job, make friends and see the same people everytime I work. Some people that have come into the gym while I've been working there include Hugh Laurie (House), Guy Pearce, Nick Carter (Backstreet Boys) and some others that I can't remember right now, haha.

Positive quote:

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

~Helen Keller

And this one is dedicated to Jill, my blog buddy:

"To do something, however small, to make others happier and better, is the highest ambition, the most elevating hope, which can inspire a human being."

--John Lubbock

**Although what Jill has done, and is doing for me, is HUGE! More than I can explain.**

They're Workin Me Hard!

After this weekend I will have worked 7 straight days in a row. It's cool, though. You know me and free food don't have any problems! I'm going to list the shows coming up that I'll be on again at the end of this post just as a reminder.

Today I was back on ER again, and what an interesting it turned out to be. First of all, the days working on ER are always long, like 14 hours, but they will only use you for half the time. Just with different scenes they shoot with different extras, you might not be used all the time. Today they use us the whole day, so it was tiring, but I ended up running into a few unexpected people. But before I get into that, first I just want to say the actors were terrible today. I have never seen people mess up lines so much in my entire life. Now, I understand that since they shoot multiple different scenes every day, its harder for a television actor to remember lines. But you would think after 30 takes (and I'm not exaggerating one bit!), the lines would start to stick! Not with these people. It wasn't the main characters, it was the guest actors. I don't know how on earth they got hired!!!

So, on my lunch break, we're sitting outside the stage we were filming on, and who drives up gets out of there car? None other than George Clooney. His office is right next to one of ER's stages. George is COOL. He said hi to us and talked and everything. Everyone likes George Clooney. He is currently filming Ocean's 13 along with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, and some others, but we only saw George. Actually, I heard that he plays basketball everyday at Warner Brothers. Later on this evening, his driver came on picked him up.

So, as I was leaving today to go home, I had to walk across the entire studio lot to get to my car, and who do I see hanging out at their trailers? Matthew Perry and D.L. Hughley, who were taping their show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Matthew was telling a story and DL was standing there puffing on a cigar. I didn't stop and talk though. I was tired and really wanted to get home. I'm not one of those people who goes all crazy around celebrities. It's just not a big deal to me (unless it's Mariah Carey, then I'd get all hot and sweaty and start hyperventilating! Ok, maybe not hyperventilate, but some of my organ systems would definitely be shutting down).

All right, don't forget to watch t.v. these next to weeks. I cut my list down to 3, because I decided that in some of the shows I really won't be seen well and who wants to go through the hassle?

1. Vanished -- this is a new show that premiered on Monday, August 21 on Fox. It's an FBI type show. I am in the 6th episode, so the one I'm in should air on September 25, at 9pm on Fox. This episode takes place in Washington D.C. There is a scene where the senator (main character) is coming out of the courthouse and all of the press and journalists are all around trying to talk to him. I play his FBI agent that escorts him out of the courthouse. I have on a gray suit. This is the show where I got the most camera time so far. So make sure to watch. Monday nights, 9pm, Fox.

2. CSI: New York -- I don't know when the 1st episode premieres this fall, but I'm in episode 4. So try and watch for commercials to see when it premieres, on what days and at what times. I play a CSI tech and I have on a green shirt and tie. There's a scene where the main characters in the AVS room (a small room) and I'm "working" right behind them. My back is to the camera, but I kept turning around so the camera could catch my face, lol. I'm not sure if it worked. I think this show comes on Wednesday nights at 10 pm.

3. Help Me Help You -- this is Ted Danson's new comedy, and the mom from Malcolm in the Middle is on the show as well. This show premieres on September 26th, and my episode airs the next week on October 3rd. I play a coffee shop worker (there are 2 of us). So, look for me walking around straightening things up and stuff like that. It's kind of like a Starbucks coffee shop. It's called the "Metro Bean" on the show. However, I don't know yet what station or time the episodes air.

Vanished is the BIG one, so watch it! Now, I'm off to a movie (Jackass #2 with my roommate), just so I can come back and only get 4 hours of sleep because I have to be downtown, on location at 6:45 am for the feature film Transformers! Remember Transformers? Did you guys know they were making a movie? Well, they are and they said we will be running down streets, screaming for our lives from the Transformers. I play a cop. This should be fun. Plus it's the last weekend of shooting for the movie!

Is There A Doctor In The House?

Man, have I been busy this week! I had no idea doing background work was going to be so grueling. I got called again to work on "ER" and that's where I've been the last 3 days. The days on ER average 14 hours on set. I guess I should be used to it. Not much different from med school, lol. It was fun though.

The first day I worked on ER was Tuesday the 8th, and lucky me. When I was done with school last year, I honestly thought to myself that I was really going to miss all the free food that I got from all the interest groups at school. I couldn't have been more wrong. I don't miss that stuff at all!! The stuff they feed you on these Hollywood sets makes the pizza and subs from med school seem like rubbish. My first day on ER (they're second day of filming for the season) they had a "welcome back lunch" celebrating the start of the 13th season of ER (which start October 5th by the way). Man oh man, they had a live Mariachi band playing and all the food you could think of. They had salad, shrimp, chicken, steak, salmon, brownies, cake, apple pie, ice cream and it was all FREE and all you could eat. I was in heaven!!! I lucked out in another way by working on ER too. I've heard some horror stories from some of the other people about how rude and mean some of the crew members and even the actors can be on some of the other shows. Everyone on ER was pretty nice. It was a good experience.

Anyways, my call time for that day was 6:45 am and we didn't wrap until 10 pm that night. Looooong day, but it was fun. I played a hospital visitor in the background, yet I got to work right next to the actors. Mekhi Pfeifer is on the show as you know, so is Shane West and John Stamos. There are some other people, but I don't them because I've never watched ER before, EVER!!! Haha. I guess I'll start now. So, me and a bunch of other people had to walk up and don the halls and in the waiting room to make the hospital look busy. I was amazed at how real everything looks. I mean, I thought it would look really fake and stuff, but with lighting and camera angles it would look real on tv, but it looks really real in person. They even have all the WelchAllyn tools and instruments and everything. They have X-rays up on the wall, which I was of course analyzing, and they were all healthy x-rays, lol. There is one scene we shot where in the background you can see a kis getting yelled at by a cop through a glass door. I am that kid, and it should be in the first episode, lol. There isn't much to doing background work, and anyone off the street can sign up to do it, but all the people you see in the background in movies and tv shows aren't people just waling around. It's actually really choreographed. I hadn't realized that.

My 3rd day on ER was the most fun, for 2 reasons. 1). I had seen some of the same people for 3 days now and gotten to know some of them, and 2). I was asked to be a stand-in for one of the actors and thus got paid double what I was getting. By this time I was telling some of the people that I was a med student. I LOVE doing this. Not because it makes me feel all important or for any other egotistical reasons, but because I just plain love grossing people it. I'm sure most of my classmates know what I'm talking about. I was talking to one of the other extras, this lady, and I was telling her I can't be grossed out and that I've literally seen everything, including STD's and even STD's of the mouth and throat. And she thought that you could only get herpes in your mouth and nothing else. Isn't that amazing??? That people don't realize that you can get anything in your mouth!! So, I told her that I'd seen gonorrhea of the throat, etc., etc., and she got so grossed out and started grabbing her throat and almost gagging as if STD's were just floating through the air waiting to get her. It was sooooo funny. I was cracking up. Then that starts a whole chain of questions about bodily functions and what not. Then a few hours later while we were waiting for filming to start again, there was a extra piece of polyurethane skin laying next to us on a tray. (They made a fake chest for one of the scenes where they had a bunch of electrodes hooked up to the patient). Some girls picks it up and is playing with it, and touches it to the face of the STD lady. Now, earlier I had noticed that the STD lady had like 4 fanny packs on and this why. She freaks out and starts pullin stuff out of her fanny packs. She sprayed her face with disinfectant, broke out some lip disinfectant stuff, etc. I mean, talk about a germaphobe. Then she comes and says to the girl, "Ever since he told me about STD's, I'm afraid of germs now". WTF!!!!!!!! She tried to blame her obsessive compulsiveness on me?!?!?! LOL She brought all that damn stuff way before I told her about some STD's. I just knew she was a little weird.

So, that was my week on ER. I may or may not go back. It's fun, but in terms of just being a background worker for right now, I need some variety. It gets too monotonous going to the same studio every day doing the same thing for 14 hours. Plus, there is so much waiting around between takes and stuff that it gets boring. So, for Monday I'm going to work on a show at Paramount Studios. I've never heard of it though, so we'll see how that goes. I had to take yesterday (Friday) off and the rest of the weekend because I couldn't get anything done. Being on set from 6 am to 10 pm, I get get to places like the photo lab and the post office because they're closed before and after I leave the set. That's the good thing about background work. They book jobs day to day, not for days or weeks at a time. So, I determine my own schedule. If I want to take a day or 2 or 14 off, I can. So yesterday I finally got all my pictures put together, packaged and mailed out to some agencies. Now I can relax a little and wait for some agents to call. Wish me luck!!