Tuesday, June 14, 2011
'Lola Versus'
Camera crews unloading and moving equipment onto campus...as far as I got so far but I'll try some sketchy paparazzi work on way to subway...
Lola Versus filming on block...
From what I'm seeing a low budget romcom starring Greta Gerwig and previously starring Orlando Bloom is filming on my block today in Brooklyn. It looks like they are setting up inside the Pratt University campus in one of the classic old brick and ivy-laced buildings for a scene.
I actually saw a blondisb pretty-yet-unremarbable in jeans and a yellow jacket, coffee cup toting woman jump out of a black suv and get walked to a trailor by a hipster looking production assistant...from the looks of pictures it appears that was Greta Gerwig.
I'm hoping to run into her male costar, Joel Kinnaman, who is currently playing the sketchy yet heroic co-detective in AMC's The Killing. Kinnaman has reportedly taken over for Orlando Bloom in Lola Versus...a trade I'll take any day personally. I find Bloom a little too precious for my male lead tastes.
I'll add some pics of the action is I can. As much as I find the random movie set popping up in my Brooklyn 'hood to be a unique and special New York experience I also never seem to catch any of the real action, ever...plus although I work sort of in that business I'm always way too big of a wuss to brazenly snap pictures.
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Return of the Purple Marauder
My life has become a little clearer since I last logged onto this blog...I was startled to see that was two years ago. I've changed a few things and I think I know what I'm doing a little bit more so we'll see, all you people I sadly imagine may one day stumble across these digital pages.
I suppose the biggest thing is, I'm not sure how a blog is supposed to work...two years ago I thought that meant I had to try to emulate others and write disingenuously...now I know all I can do is write for real, and see what happens.
I changed my fake bloggin gname from one I hoped would convey some bullshit sense of literary "hip" to one I used in college when making prank calls. I'd get high and challenge meathead athletes to steel cage death matches, and each time it was amazing to hear them take it so fucking serious you could almost feel the heat bulging out of their neck veins while they screamed at a gravelly voice at the other end going by The Purple Marauder to meet them in person to engage in physical battle.
I love writing, and sadly I have the same panic attack every two years or so that I'm unable to figure out how to write for a living. Problem is, while I've been doing all that worrying the last two years between posts I forgot one big thing...to just write.
I guess that's my goal now, be the Purple Marauder and not someone taking themselves, and their life, so fucking serious...advice I think Lebron James could heed right about now as well.
I suppose the biggest thing is, I'm not sure how a blog is supposed to work...two years ago I thought that meant I had to try to emulate others and write disingenuously...now I know all I can do is write for real, and see what happens.
I changed my fake bloggin gname from one I hoped would convey some bullshit sense of literary "hip" to one I used in college when making prank calls. I'd get high and challenge meathead athletes to steel cage death matches, and each time it was amazing to hear them take it so fucking serious you could almost feel the heat bulging out of their neck veins while they screamed at a gravelly voice at the other end going by The Purple Marauder to meet them in person to engage in physical battle.
I love writing, and sadly I have the same panic attack every two years or so that I'm unable to figure out how to write for a living. Problem is, while I've been doing all that worrying the last two years between posts I forgot one big thing...to just write.
I guess that's my goal now, be the Purple Marauder and not someone taking themselves, and their life, so fucking serious...advice I think Lebron James could heed right about now as well.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
I need a drink
What a freaking week last week was. The curve balls life can throw you are truly the most humbling experiences, in a flash you realize your life, and dreams, and plans are as fragile as a fly clinging to the windshield of a car driving down the freeway, just waiting to be flicked aside and smashed into a thousand pieces at any moment.
With my show airing last week, the past two weeks were stress time for me professionally. Putting an hour on national television always seems to come down to the final two weeks, no matter how many months you've been writing and filming and planning. The panic of what you missed, what will and won't work, and what never came through all hit about the Wednesday before the final week. I thrive on the pressure, but I'm also a walking stress bomb trying to pull together the many thoughts and ideas high stepping through my brain like crazed circus performers.
Last week started with a stupid decision, my girlfriend and I took our five month old puppy to be neutered on Monday, a decision that has sank in my heart for weeks as I thought about taking that away from him, his natural instincts, his bravado, his balls. I know it is, in the long term the right thing to do but dam it, who am I to take away a man's ability to make babies? To piss everywhere in an act of territorial machismo? To have the urge to dominate and stake a claim in weaker dogs?
Because of these conflicting feelings I made sure my girlfriend actually delivered him to the vet, so she would always be associated with the trauma and I would remain as fun, nut friendly dad. The surgery went well, and when I got home Monday night my poor, drugged up pooch was sitting in the corner, cone of shame sadly hanging around his furry head as he tossed me a look that simply said, "what happened?" I nearly broke down right there.
As the drugs wore off that night we quickly realized what a problem this was going to be, Conan was unable to walk, and was totally obsessed with trying to bite and lick the stitches, turning the cone of shame into a weapon with which he could drag the edges across his missing gonads and stitches.
If we had waited until this week I could have spent most days home with him, recuperating from my show and the past few months and depending how the show was received mending each of our wounded pride. Because we did it last week my girlfriend was forced to spend Tuesday at home with him, and when he still wasn't better she took off Wednesday as well. This is where the curve ball comes.
Wednesday morning, I can only think about work and how important that was at the time to me. A stupid hour of national television that people will never remember caused me to ignore my injured pup and the sacrifice my girlfriend was making for me to take care of him for us. So without uttering a thank you that morning I stormed off in a huff, buried in my blackberry trying to tie together the final parts of the show as my girlfriend complained of feeling tired.
It was a little after 1 p.m., I was hunched at my desk, leg shaking, obsessing over some video choices for part of the show when my cell phone started ringing. My girlfriend's mother, an odd call that caused me to pause before answering. About an hour before I called my girlfriend to see how it was going, and I thought it was strange that she was taking a nap when she answered the phone. A feeling of dread settled over me as I picked up the cell and answered, her mother's voice a calm panic.
"She was at the grocery store, and suddenly she passed out, had a seizure on line and she's in an ambulance on her way to the Brooklyn Hospital."
At that moment my world feel to pieces. The dog, my job, bills, stress...gone, unimportant, meaningless. I Stood up and sprinted out of our office, fighting back fear and tears as I pictured my girl alone, afraid, suddenly in the back of an ambulance with no idea of what happened. She is so healthy and has never had any issues, I'm the fat slob who occasionally smokes and doesn't eat healthy making this call so much worse because it was so out of the blue. As I fought with cabbies to take me to Brooklyn she called me, from the ambulance, groggy and scared but just wanting to tell me she was ok.
I finally found a hack willing to take me all the way to Brooklyn, and I proceeded to have the longest, most horrible cab ride ever through midday traffic. Sitting amidst a sea of cars, heat vines snaking around you as a chorus of horns and mouths and machines hammer at you and an uninterested cabbie yammers away at his cell phone while your world and life seems to be slipping away with each red light, i realized what real stress was. Stress isn't putting on a television show, stress is having the most important person in the world suffer a medical emergency out of nowhere, and being unable to help her, or be with her, or tell her what happened. Stress is not being able to reach her again on her cell phone and have every terrible thought go through your head for why.
Relief is when you get to the hospital and see her, scared and sad sitting alone in a hospital bed, pushing aside the security guard trying to tell you to sign a form and hugging her with all you have left because you know she's your world and you're so sorry she was alone.
She's doing ok now, confidence shaken and we're both still not sure what happened. The hospital and her doctor chalked it up to low blood pressure and a fainting spell, followed by a bad bump on the head. People at the grocery store claim it looked like she had a seizure and the neurologist can't see her until the 27th. So until the 27th we wait, and pray, and hope it was just a fluke no matter what. If I needed a humility check, or an appreciation of what is really important check I got it in a big way. The fragility, how instantly it can be taken from you while you're too busy with work to even see the right hook coming is terrifying.
Life is not only short, but it hangs by a string and I'm going to spend a lot of time hugging my girl, petting my pooch, and finding the work I really want.
With my show airing last week, the past two weeks were stress time for me professionally. Putting an hour on national television always seems to come down to the final two weeks, no matter how many months you've been writing and filming and planning. The panic of what you missed, what will and won't work, and what never came through all hit about the Wednesday before the final week. I thrive on the pressure, but I'm also a walking stress bomb trying to pull together the many thoughts and ideas high stepping through my brain like crazed circus performers.
Last week started with a stupid decision, my girlfriend and I took our five month old puppy to be neutered on Monday, a decision that has sank in my heart for weeks as I thought about taking that away from him, his natural instincts, his bravado, his balls. I know it is, in the long term the right thing to do but dam it, who am I to take away a man's ability to make babies? To piss everywhere in an act of territorial machismo? To have the urge to dominate and stake a claim in weaker dogs?
Because of these conflicting feelings I made sure my girlfriend actually delivered him to the vet, so she would always be associated with the trauma and I would remain as fun, nut friendly dad. The surgery went well, and when I got home Monday night my poor, drugged up pooch was sitting in the corner, cone of shame sadly hanging around his furry head as he tossed me a look that simply said, "what happened?" I nearly broke down right there.
As the drugs wore off that night we quickly realized what a problem this was going to be, Conan was unable to walk, and was totally obsessed with trying to bite and lick the stitches, turning the cone of shame into a weapon with which he could drag the edges across his missing gonads and stitches.
If we had waited until this week I could have spent most days home with him, recuperating from my show and the past few months and depending how the show was received mending each of our wounded pride. Because we did it last week my girlfriend was forced to spend Tuesday at home with him, and when he still wasn't better she took off Wednesday as well. This is where the curve ball comes.
Wednesday morning, I can only think about work and how important that was at the time to me. A stupid hour of national television that people will never remember caused me to ignore my injured pup and the sacrifice my girlfriend was making for me to take care of him for us. So without uttering a thank you that morning I stormed off in a huff, buried in my blackberry trying to tie together the final parts of the show as my girlfriend complained of feeling tired.
It was a little after 1 p.m., I was hunched at my desk, leg shaking, obsessing over some video choices for part of the show when my cell phone started ringing. My girlfriend's mother, an odd call that caused me to pause before answering. About an hour before I called my girlfriend to see how it was going, and I thought it was strange that she was taking a nap when she answered the phone. A feeling of dread settled over me as I picked up the cell and answered, her mother's voice a calm panic.
"She was at the grocery store, and suddenly she passed out, had a seizure on line and she's in an ambulance on her way to the Brooklyn Hospital."
At that moment my world feel to pieces. The dog, my job, bills, stress...gone, unimportant, meaningless. I Stood up and sprinted out of our office, fighting back fear and tears as I pictured my girl alone, afraid, suddenly in the back of an ambulance with no idea of what happened. She is so healthy and has never had any issues, I'm the fat slob who occasionally smokes and doesn't eat healthy making this call so much worse because it was so out of the blue. As I fought with cabbies to take me to Brooklyn she called me, from the ambulance, groggy and scared but just wanting to tell me she was ok.
I finally found a hack willing to take me all the way to Brooklyn, and I proceeded to have the longest, most horrible cab ride ever through midday traffic. Sitting amidst a sea of cars, heat vines snaking around you as a chorus of horns and mouths and machines hammer at you and an uninterested cabbie yammers away at his cell phone while your world and life seems to be slipping away with each red light, i realized what real stress was. Stress isn't putting on a television show, stress is having the most important person in the world suffer a medical emergency out of nowhere, and being unable to help her, or be with her, or tell her what happened. Stress is not being able to reach her again on her cell phone and have every terrible thought go through your head for why.
Relief is when you get to the hospital and see her, scared and sad sitting alone in a hospital bed, pushing aside the security guard trying to tell you to sign a form and hugging her with all you have left because you know she's your world and you're so sorry she was alone.
She's doing ok now, confidence shaken and we're both still not sure what happened. The hospital and her doctor chalked it up to low blood pressure and a fainting spell, followed by a bad bump on the head. People at the grocery store claim it looked like she had a seizure and the neurologist can't see her until the 27th. So until the 27th we wait, and pray, and hope it was just a fluke no matter what. If I needed a humility check, or an appreciation of what is really important check I got it in a big way. The fragility, how instantly it can be taken from you while you're too busy with work to even see the right hook coming is terrifying.
Life is not only short, but it hangs by a string and I'm going to spend a lot of time hugging my girl, petting my pooch, and finding the work I really want.
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