Time flies when you’re busy

January has been crazy (the good kind, not the drama kind). I’m getting multiple work calls almost every day, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is unheard of this time of year.

Tuesday, I missed a work call for Wednesday as I was swimming when the call came. Since I have yet to figure out how to bring my phone into the lap pool with me, by the time I dried off and got back to the locker the job had been given to someone else who called back sooner.

“Oh, well” I thought “I’ll just clean the house and hopefully I’ll get a day near the end of the week”.

Wednesday  morning at 6:45, the phone rang and the best boy from Doctors in Love* asked if I could come in right then as someone had called in sick.

Normally, I don’t like to jump out of bed, throw on whatever clothing smells the least and haul ass out the door. I like to get up, have some coffee, putter around and generally make a leisurely exit, but since Doctors in Love shoots across town (literally all the way across the city) and it’s an hour drive with no traffic,  I hurried as waiting too much past 7-ish would result in a multi hour stop-and-go nightmare.

It turned out to be an easy day (one set, two actors) with a bunch of really awesome guys. The only bad part about working with this particular group of guys is that they use a bunch of custom rigged lights, and as such have odd names for them.

Normally, there’s a bit of variation in what stuff is called (some people call a 4 foot, four tube Kino Flo a ‘fat boy’, some call it a ‘tall boy’), but it’s all basically the same.

Custom lights, however, are, well, custom, so there’s no frame of reference.

When the gaffer gets on the walkie and asks for a “Long John Silver on a teeter totter**” I have no frame of reference and stand there, halfway between the staging area and the set, blinking rapidly and wondering if I want to ask for clarification on the walkie, thus making everyone think I’m a bit slow, or wait to ask a co-worker, making the gaffer think I’m lazy.

Awesome.

It all worked out well, though (crazy light names aside), and I got picked up for the next day as well, so I got to go back today.

Today as also an easy day with fun people, even if the work was a bit more complex (multiple actors, a stage move, etc..), but I was inside a heated stage all day – a good thing since it’s currently really cold here in Los Angeles. Objectively cold, not California cold.

During lunch today, I got a text from the best boy on Reluctant Porn Star* asking if I could work Friday and Saturday. Both days on the beach, both days splits (afternoon call so the day’s half day, half night).

I predict both nights to be cold and damp (and working on the beach sucks balls), but hey, it’s work, right?

*Not a real show name

** An LED strip in an aluminum housing with the ballasts rigged to hang off of it. It looks like a penis on a surfboard.

Filed under: crack of dawn, long long drives, studio lots, Work, actor, busy, cold, doctor, January, lap pool, lights, long john silver, odd names, phone, pool, swimming, winter

Bluetooth tastes like burning

I can remember a time, not so long ago, when if no one was home, the phone would just ring and ring and ring and eventually whoever was calling would figure it out and call back later. If it was really important they’d just have to track you down. Or wait. Either one was good.

Then, we got an answering machine and suddenly we’d never miss a call again – Dog got out? Bathroom lights left on? Ed McMahon got lost while trying to deliver one of those giant checks and needed directions? Good thing you left a message ’cause that needed seeing to. Eventually. When we got home and it was too late (for Ed, anyways).

Then, when I moved out I one-upped the family and got an answering machine that had a remote code – by punching a number code on the keypad of the phone you were calling from you could get your messages without even being home. Technology really was something! I could know before I even got home that I’d left the radio on all day or that the dog had been digging up the neighbor’s philodendron.

Then came the pager. I first got a pager when I was 22 or 23 and working at a job which insisted I be reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I can remember driving around the pre-gentrification Hollywood searching desperately for a payphone that worked (most of them had the receivers torn off for some reason) or wasn’t occupied by a hooker trying to avoid a loitering charge, so I could return a page that I was just certain was the most important thing on earth (if it weren’t, why would they have paged me)?

Then, I got a cell phone. My first cell phone was from Airtouch in Westwood and the cement-block sized phone came with a plan which allowed me to talk for 20 minutes each month. So I saved the cellphone for emergencies and still ended up cruising the streets looking for payphones, but I bitched about having to drive around all the time and expose myself to whatever contagious microbe had set up housekeeping on the mouthpieces of public payphones because those fuckers just. wouldn’t. stop. paging. me. By this time that whole “911” pager code thing had come into fashion, so of course, every page was labelled “911”. Especially the pet-related ones.

Then came more and better cell plans and cell phones with speakers so not only did I not have to hunt down a payphone and get out of the car, I didn’t even have to hold the phone to my ear while I was driving, eating, reading the directions page of the call sheet and talking all at the same time.

Needless to say, by then I had ditched the pager. So inconvenient.

I started to bitch whenever I had to expend energy to actually hold the phone to the side of my head.

Then, I got a phone with different ring tones, so I could give different rings to work contacts, friends, family, bill collectors, former lovers, etc..

Soon, I started to bitch if I couldn’t tell who was calling me by the ring. Then, I got a phone that had a thing called “driving mode” where it would actually announce the name of the caller. After that, I started to bitch if I had to I.D. the caller by the ring instead of having the caller’s name announced for me like my life was some sort of badly-planned debutante ball.

Now, we have Bluetooth. Not only do I not have to hold the phone to my ear – I don’t even have to be tethered to said phone at all! It can be laying under dirty laundry in the backseat of the car and I can still answer it!

It’s not just for the car, though – I ride my bike a lot and now, when the phone rings, I don’t have to stop and dig in my backpack to find the phone before it goes to voice mail (I especially don’t want it to go to voicemail if it’s work), I just tap a button on the headset and answer the phone. Sweet.

This morning, as I rode the bike along Sunset with the early morning sun just breaking through the marine layer, past the Rite-Aid with the crazy lady in front and the hipsters staggering out of some all-night party in one of the Chateau Marmont’s suites, the phone rang and I didn’t even lose speed. I took one hand off the handlebars and hit the button.

Extra sweet.

Later, I found out from my friend that I can program the phone to respond to voice commands from the headset – so i can tap the headset, say a name and never even have to dig my phone out of the darkest corners of whatever bag it is that I’m carrying. I just have to be no more than 30 feet away from it.

Makes me wonder what I’ll be bitching about next. I love technology.

Filed under: life in LA, Non-Work, answering machine, bike, Bluetooth, car, cell phone, cult, law, phone, ride, technology