Our few days a week unit has a new gaffer, which isn’t a bad thing. New gaffers mean new connections and the potential of more jobs down the road – but there’s always a period of, well, newness.

We all knew how to read our old gaffer (who has gotten a TV show of his own and we’re all thrilled for him. Full time gigs are a wonderful thing) – when he needed coffee (and how many sugars he liked), when he was joking, when he wasn’t and we needed to really hustle, etc… We don’t know the new guy (who is very nice and we like him a lot) that well, so we spend a lot of our time second guessing ourselves and doing a lot of unnecessary scrambling around since we don’t really know exactly what he wants yet.

Obviously, an unhappy gaffer is a very, very bad thing so we do everything we can to prevent that from happening. Usually, gaffers want to bring in their own crew and he kinda got us handed to him, so we really don’t want him to decide we suck and he’d rather have his own guys. It’ll get easier as we all get used to each other, of course.

Also, I’ve got the late fall blahs. For some reason it’s really bad this year, mainly because I’m already burned out on Christmas – we shot the Christmas episode, so I got a good dose of tinsel at the beginning of the month, and on the lot they’ve got the trees and wreaths and lights up already and I’m just sick to death of it and it’s not even December yet.

Can I just decide to ignore the holidays this year and go sit on some beach somewhere with a foofy umbrella drink in my hand and get massages?

Oh, wait. That would cost money.

Nevermind.

One of the things that sound mixers have to deal with is shoe noises. Sometimes, the shoes that make actors look super sexy also make a godawful amount of noise on hard floors.

If the actors’ feet aren’t going to be in frame, then usually the sound folks just put down matting (it’s rubber matting with all-weather carpet on one side) on the floor, or have the actors wear slippers instead of regular shoes, but if the camera sees the floor then that’s obviously not an option.

Usually, then they’ll pad the bottoms of the shoes so they don’t make noise, but high heels can really be a problem – normally I’ve seen them put tape on the heels of high heels, but that can ruin the shoe (and don’t think they’re not going to sell these at the end of the show). Hence, the little crutch tips, which I think are hilarious and very cool.

LAist, in a clearly misguided attempt to maintain some stylistic consistency, a modicum of professionalism, and minimize lawsuits, tend to edit the holy hell out of everything I write for them. Therefore, a much shorter (and less offensive) version of this is on their site, but here, for you, is the full piece:

Enjoy!

Friday night, as the cool kids gathered at the sold out Pixies show in Hollywood, I set out for Beverly Hills on a solitary mission – to attend, survive and report back from the Los Angeles Cougar Convention, held at the badly ageing Crowne Plaza Hotel.

I suppose it made perfect sense to send me wandering into the maelstrom – I am, after all, a ‘woman of a certain age’ with a crazed look in my eye, a credit card with enough space to run up a bar tab and a hotel room (if necessary), and, most importantly, no Pixies tickets.

With a purse full of roofies and cheap gin (mother always said to be prepared), I arrived at the event, checked in as press and was introduced to the event’s organizer, a genial fellow who informed me that the organization behind the event is actually a non-profit educational group (no, really) dedicated to enabling women who enjoy dating guys younger than their own children and the men who love them. I then strolled into the ballroom and was charged by the attending press who smelled a victim, until I informed them that I was also press. They then lost interest in me and clustered around the vendor who was demonstrating personal massagers on her friend.

I’d arrived before the official start time of the event in order to sit in on what was billed as the first-ever ‘cougar school’, which was really a short talk by Lucia (no last name), a local radio personality and author who apparently specializes in the older woman/ younger man dynamic (and is dating her personal trainer who happens to be 12 years her junior). Lucia (no last name) is a very attractive woman who refused to state her age and advised the other ladies not to do so, either, gave some generalized advice such as “let him pay so he can feel like a man” and “don’t get too friendly with his mother”.

Too bad there were far more press there than attendees, although I’m sure we all learned something. In case you were wondering, according to Lucia, the term ‘cougar’ was coined by a player on Vancouver’s hockey team, who started calling the older single women who came to the games cougars. The press present raised our eyebrows in disbelief at anyone in Canada setting any kind of trend, but I suppose it’s possible.

Also according to Lucia, to qualify as a cougar a woman must be at least 40 years old and exclusively date men at least 10 years younger than herself. The rest of you ladies are out of luck and just getting your freak on like everyone else.

The event started with a ’speed-dating’ type mixer, followed by a keynote address by Lucia (no last name) who for some reason kept quoting Karl Marx, and the cougar-themed “comedy” stylings of Unique Monique, and then a dancing and drinking at the cash bar.

Note to event organizers: Wonder why your event keeps getting press hatchet jobs? It’s the cash bar. Never, ever make any media representative pay for drinks. Trust me on this one.

Although many of the guys there declared that they did indeed find older women attractive, many of them, when questioned, admitted that they were interested in meeting any lady, not just an older one, and had primarily shown up out of curiosity. Most of the ladies there would only admit to being curious about the event. One guy told me he was planning on organizing a competing event and was just there to scope it out.

The structured events were really enjoyable (despite photographers circling like vultures), but as soon as the party went into lights out and dance mode, things came to a grinding halt – groups of guys talking to one another and stealing furtive glances at the ladies, and the ladies sipping twee cocktails and giggling. And, of course, one couple who decided to waste no time and were making out in the corner. Just like high school, only many of us are middle-aged. And they keep asking me why I won’t go to any reunions.

Despite the event’s organizer telling me about the non-profit status and greater good mission, when I asked his wife (who was taking the money) if all the events were so loaded with men (about a 4:1 ratio, which made a good night for the ladies), she snapped at me to not ask her those questions as I might cost her ‘customers’.

Thusly chastised, I scurried back to the safety of the press crowd around the bar, where I was then cornered by a very, very tan man who wanted to tell me about the dating site he runs where I could meet a ‘nice fella’. I decided against explaining to him why this was a fundamentally bad idea and excused myself.

As the dance music upstairs grew increasingly lame (or so I’m told) and attendees ran out of cash, the party moved down to the hotel’s lobby bar where I was camped out in a futile attempt to log onto the wireless to post my story.

It’s amazing how quickly one forgets about the internet when one is drinking heavily surrounded by twentysomething guys who think older women are ’super hot, dude’.

By the time I left, I’d collected a dozen phone numbers. Just for the sake of a story, mind you.

I was feeling pretty awesome – a whole week of work, foot feeling good.. yup. Top o’ the world, so to speak. Until yesterday night.

Sometimes, at the gaffer’s direction, one moves BFLs* just beyond the reach of the head or power feeders, but not far enough to justify completely wrapping up said feeder. When this happens, most of us usually just drape the feeder through the bale of the light so it’s easy to pull out again but off the ground so the stand rolls without dragging the cable (which is bad for the cable and the connectors). This works great (and saves time), but yesterday after I’d moved my BFL and started to pull out the feeder, it got away from me and the hard Bakelite connector hit my foot, right on the spot where the incision was where the nerves are still regenerating (or degenerating or something) and which is still spectacularly sensitive to the touch.

There’s regular pain, there’s burn pain and then there’s ‘I just dropped something on a nerve end’ pain. Guess which one is the worst?

As the world tilted and turned pale, I clutched the light stand, eyes bulging, teeth gritted, knees weak, trying desperately to hold in the awful word I really wanted to scream (the producer was standing right behind me and the last thing I need is another lecture from the studio’s PC patrol) while my co-workers tried to simultaneously move lights for the set-up and make sure I was okay.

The really mean (or funny, depending on how you look at these things) part of the joke here is that it was near the end of the night and I had just changed into my comfy shoes, which are very soft and squishy but not really designed to protect one’s feet from falling objects or one’s own stupidity.

As soon as I was able to walk again without cursing whichever cruel god did this, I managed to gimp around until we’d finished the set-up, and then excused myself, went outside the stage and let loose with that swearing I’d been so wanting.

Once the nerves stopped screaming, everything was fine and there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage to anything other than my already bruised dignity.

Call time: 8 am.

Wrap time: 11 pm.

Today, as I was in the pool swimming laps, I missed a work call and by the time I got out, got dried off and checked the phone the slot had gone to someone else. Damn, damn. I don’t want to take the phone poolside with me for obvious reasons. I’ve looked at some of those waterproof plastic bag things, but I’m not sure I trust them.

I’ve got to work out something, though. I hate missing work calls.

*Big Fucking Light

I feel pretty good considering I seriously poisoned myself Saturday night with gallons of cheap Shiraz and mini-Snickers (the Snickers were for the kids, the wine, not so much). I usually have to work on Halloween, so it was nice that it fell on a weekend and I was able to go to two parties, although I was too lazy to make any sort of attempt at a costume. This wasn’t a problem at the first party, but at the second party I was the only one not dressed up, plus I had to walk though the annual Halloween street party in Hollywood (they close off Hollywood Blvd. to traffic and people walk up and down wearing costumes). I told the people who asked that I was dressed as a serial killer and we look just like everyone else, but no one was buying it. I’m lucky nobody doused me in Silly String.

Last week, I got a full five-day week, which is a rarity in day player world. Three’s the average, four is breathing room in the bank account and five is extra happy – plus it was on two different shows so I won’t take quite the tax hit that I would have had it all been on the same payroll. I also worked 70 hours, with fairly short turnarounds every night, so I just couldn’t bring myself to come home and sit at the computer instead of showering off and face planting into the bed. The foot held up reasonably well, though. It hurt at the end of the week, but not any more than the other foot hurt, so I guess it’s an almost-win.

I didn’t know beforehand that I was going to get a whole week, so of course I’d gone out on Sunday and bought groceries, many of which had spoiled by the time Saturday morning rolled around. Oh, well.

So far this week I’ve got one day tomorrow, but hopefully I’ll pick up another day or two as the week progresses.

I will never understand why people who live in meticulously restored century-old houses worth truckloads of money feel compelled to fling open their custom-cut imported wood doors and welcome movie crews, who are infamous for our ability to destroy pretty much anything within a three mile radius of base camp.

We do our best to limit the destruction to stuff that can be easily replaced (like the grass), but something is certain to get damaged no matter how hard we try.

Today, we were rigging in a breathtakingly beautiful turn of the 20th century mansion that’s been lovingly restored to its former glory – including the original brickwork in the driveway which can’t be driven on or have any equipment parked on it (fun for the stakebed drivers)- and while we didn’t destroy anything today the potential for heartbreak is just hanging in the air. When we arrived, there were already chips in some of the brickwork, but let’s all just hope it ends there.

I was working with a group of folks that I really, really like and we weren’t super busy (most of the day was spent waiting on stakebeds full of equipment to arrive), so we were able to admire the original woodwork and the stunning view from the back deck (temporary, installed by the grips) over the hillside.

Also, a reader was kind enough to email me a correction to Friday’s post – turns out, the terrible accident that cost a man his eye did not involve the heavy rubber bungees that fucked up my elbow, but the type pictured.
I stand corrected.
And I’m working four days this week (unless one of them cancels, of course) which is very, very good.

Matching bungees at Warner Brothers.

Years ago, bungees were standard equipment on lighting and grip trucks, but most lots and shows have now banned them.

Specifically, they’ve banned the heavy black industrial rubber bungees (that I can’t find a photo of) due to accidents. What would happen was that one would buy the bungee (and the rental houses would only sell them, so since we paid for them, we figured we’d keep using them to get our money’s worth), then it would sit in the sun on a cart (or in an alternately boiling hot/freezing cold truck) for a long time and get dry rot and then when the bungee got stretched it would snap and … kapow. I’ve got bungee-related bone chips in one of my elbows, and one would be hard-pressed to find any crew person without a bungee horror story to tell.  One poor guy even lost an eye, which is what ultimately led to the near unilateral ban on the things.

I actually kind of like the stretchy bungees that are shown in the photo – they’re great for small lightweight stuff and they don’t look as beefy as the black ones so there’s no false sense of security about how much they can hold (“hey, give me two or three bungees” “but that’s a 10K!” pause “Ah, okay. Give me four”).

Most of the time we use things called rope ratchets on our carts instead, and full-sized ratchet straps to secure the carts to the side of the truck when it rolls.

If you’re thinking about using ratchet straps for the first time, please learn how to thread them properly before you fuck them up and make me want to kill you while I try desperately to open them up after they’ve jammed while my co-workers shout insults as they wait for me to get the thing open so we can load the last cart and go home.

Whenever you watch a TV show or a movie and there are two or more people walking with the camera in front of them moving backwards, that’s called a ‘walk and talk’. Most walk and talks are lit with a light (usually one of those round paper Chinese lanterns) that’s affixed to a long pole, and with an extension cord running back away from the actors. There are some lights that can be run off a battery pack, but tungsten chinese lanterns (which use standard household bulbs) aren’t one of them. So, to power the lamp that’s lighting the actors for the walk and talk, a stinger must be run to a nearby (how nearby depends on how far the actors are walking and talking) – not towards the actors, but backwards. When the actors walk, one person holds the light over the camera (but stays behind and out-of-the-way – hence the long pole), and at least one other person runs behind keeping the cable out from under the first person’s feet and out of the shot. On really long walk and talks, it’s not uncommon to need several cable wranglers and 200 feet of stinger.

Yesterday’s wasn’t too bad at all – only 50 feet of cable, and two of us handled it (although the sound guy did help as I wasn’t able to keep the cable off the ground behind me, which made noise). The only problem is the one that always happens – people don’t realize what we’re doing and stand behind us (or worse, set up chairs). When I’m walking backwards frantically coiling cable as fast as I can and trying to keep an eye on my co-worker for speed changes or turns, a chair or a body is potentially a problem. More than once I’ve crashed into someone or fallen over a chair that got set up behind me while I wasn’t looking. Luckily, that didn’t happen yesterday. One of the makeup ladies didn’t realize what we were doing and set her chair in the pathway, but moved right away once she figured out what was going on.

We ended up having a13.5 hour day, which is good since unless I can scare up another day, it’ll be all I’ll get this week.

Today the weather was so gorgeous that I ended up riding about 30 miles on the bike, which isn’t normally a lot for me, but since it’s the first long ride I’ve done since May, I’m completely wiped out. In a good way.

Yesterday started out with a Morton’s Fork – pants or rain gear. Wearing normal cotton pants means that I’m feeling fairly optimistic about having to remove the rain gear (and need I mention Murphy’s Law here – it applies to rain gear and the amount of sun that we can expect). If the rain settles in and I have to wear the rain gear over the cotton pants  for a while in a few hours I’ll be wearing something that feels a lot like a damp washrag. If I lose all hope of clear skies and plan to wear the rain pants all day, then I have to wear  moisture-wicking long underwear which do the job well, but are not really work appropriate without the shell and so necessitate my leaving on the rain pants all day (or until I can manage to change), rain or not.

Either way, the inside of the pants will be gross and slimy and clammy at the end of the day, but with the long underwear, I won’t feel it (for the record, I wear Lowe Alpine expedition weight tights. They’re comfy, warm and they’re black so if my rain pants rip it won’t be that obvious). Yesterday, I chose to wear the rain pants (and keep the regular pants in my bag just in case of random bursts of sunlight and temperature spikes), and I’m glad I did – even during the brief periods of no rain, the ground (and the equipment and all upwards facing surfaces upon which one could potentially sit) was soaked.

I know it seems like a silly thing to worry about, but in the past, I’ve worn the rain pants, had the sun come out, been unable to go change and had to swelter until lunch. Or, I’ve worn the regular pants and been soaked to the skin in 15 minutes and been wet and miserable for the rest of the day.

I hate being uncomfortable at work, and also absolutely can’t stand to have wet feet.  There is nothing so miserable as having water soak through your shoes and having to walk around, feeling your feet squish around in soaking wet socks for 12 hours. After the first time this happened to me, I went out and bought the best pair of rainboots that I could afford.

Due to turnaround issues for the next day, I didn’t have to go up in the condor (even though I’d originally been booked to do so), so I ran around on the ground in the rain all night, which was fine since I was prepared for everything except the hoards of extras who were really bad about not getting out of our way and blocking the entrance to our staging area. I was reduced one time to yelling at them, but I’m not really supposed to do that. If I abide by set protocol, I have to go find one of the ADs and ask them to ask the extras to please move out of the sweaty people’s way while we’re carrying heavy things over wet cement (and up and down wet metal stairways) and trying to not go ass over teakettle in the process.

Luckily, the really heavy rain didn’t happen until today, when we were safely inside on a stage. Hooray!

To answer Jonathan’s question in the comments about which rain gear to buy: It depends on your budget and your priorities. As you can tell, I like to be as comfortable as possible while I’m being rained on, so I went the expensive Gore-Tex and tech fabric route. Some of my co-workers are more tolerant of stewing in their own funk under a layer of flourescent colored vinyl, so they just go to West Marine and buy the heavy duty fisherman’s rain suit and they’re fine with that – and that’s certainly not a bad option. The West Marine suits will last you for years and years and are much easier to mend than the snappy outdoor store gear.

I do not recommend going to the surplus store and buying the cheap stuff. It’ll fall apart when you need it most, and you’ll have to replace it so often that it’ll be more expensive in the long run than shelling out for something quality, no matter what you decide to buy.

With the Gore-Tex stuff, it’s more a matter of which features to avoid than it is of branding.  You want to avoid a zip on or snap on hood (they leak like crazy), and the more exterior pockets and fancy vented panels the jacket has, the more likely it is to snag on things like stands and rip.   Make sure your jacket has armpit zip vents, though. I usually keep mine just a couple of inches open and it really cuts down on the sweating.  I’d also recommend one that has a two headed (so to speak) zipper so you can zip it up and then unzip a bit of the bottom to flare it out so it’ll fit over your tool belt.

When you buy rain pants, make sure you buy ones that have zippers on the sides at least halfway up the leg so you don’t have to remove your shoes to remove or put on the pants.  I would also recommend getting high topped rain boots and not just using waterproof low-cut running shoes. If you have to wade through a puddle you don’t want nasty muddy water slopping into the tops of your shoes. On Deadwood, I wore gaiters over my boots and under the rain pants because the water was so deep when it rained, but it was also about 80% horse shit so I really didn’t want that stuff in my socks.

Knee-high gaiters actually aren’t a bad buy – if it stops raining and you want to take off the full pants for breathability, but the ground’s wet and you don’t want to get the bottoms of your jeans soaked,  you can just put on the gaiters and wade through all manner of damp vegetation with impunity.  Ignore the initial taunting from your co-workers. Three hours later they’ll be asking you where you bought those things.

Should you buy tech gear, spend the extra money and purchase gear made by a company that offers a lifetime guarantee on the clothing.  I once sent an ancient pair of rain pants that had rotted interior seams back to Mountain Hardware and they replaced them with no questions asked.  Just try that with some crap that you bought from a discount store. Have a drink before you go shopping if you need something to help you steel yourself to drop several Benjamins on rain gear.

Tech stuff or vinyl, you’ll be much more comfy if you wear some sort of moisture wicking clothing underneath.

There’s no perfect rain gear. It’s all got drawbacks. You just have to find out what works for you. Most of the outdoor stores (REI, A16 if you’re in LA) will take returns on used gear if you buy something and don’t like it. I had to try three jackets before I found one that worked for me.

Today, Southern California’s first big winter rainstorm rolls in. Heavy rain is predicted for this afternoon and tonight, lasting until tomorrow night.

Of course, I’m going to be working outside.  The past couple of years have had lighter-than-average rainfall, so it’s been a while since I’ve had to stand in a downpour all night.

At least I’ve got good rain gear, as do all of us. Memo to outdoor clothing companies: If you really want to test out how waterproof your clothing really is, give it to film crews.  We’ll wear it for 14 hours at a stretch and will give you honest feedback about how much your stuff does or does not suck.

I just wish my rain jacket had a ‘toolbelt panel’ at the bottom.  I end up shoving things into my pockets to keep them dry, which makes my pants want to fall down. My jacket’s got pockets, but they don’t hold very much.

Think of me when you’re all warm cozy tonight.