Fill 'er up

Yep, Sean will now be pumping his own fuel at home. Today a barrel of waste vegetable oil, or WVO, was delivered to the house. This is used cooking oil that has been filtered and de-watered so it can be used as automotive fuel. Sean's been joking about the savory aroma that pure soybean oil gives off when it combusts in his engine, but the WVO probably will smell like french fries or onion rings when it heats up. Yum, the junk food-mobile! It's recycling at its best -- and, at $2.59 per gallon, about a dollar less per gallon than diesel gasoline.

Guess I'll have to change out my bumper sticker for one that reads "used cooking oil."

Good timing

Yesterday afternoon a woman at the information desk asked about the difference between a christening and a baptism. Laura R. wasn't sure, so she asked me -- I've just gotta say, it's a sad day when I become the go-to person on a religious matter. Anyway, I started fumbling around, saying I thought a christening was for infants, and it's basically the parents presenting the baby to the church, and a baptism is for older kids and adults who make the decision themselves to join the church. While I was trying to explain this to the customer, a very nice woman with limited English skills, a priest walked up to the desk. (That sounds like the start of a joke, but it really happened.) "Hey, let's ask this guy!" I said brightly. "I'll bet he knows."

The priest more or less confirmed what I'd said, then went on to ask Laura R. for help in finding something. When the two of them left the desk in search of his book, the customer turned to me, beaming, and remarked how strangely lucky it was that the priest had come along just then. "It's like, you know, you have a computer problem, and --" here she mimed a magical poof! "-- a nerd shows up."

P.S. For those of you interested in these matters, World Domination for Beginners will be screened as part of this year's 48-Hour Film Project on Saturday night. For more information about the screening, see here.

World domination for beginners

This past weekend, Team Biscuits & Gravy rallied for their fifth annual entry in the 48-Hour Film Project. The film came in at exactly seven minutes, plus credits, was completed on time and was -- mostly -- turned in on time. (More on that eventually.)

Sean and Curtis drew superhero as their genre. They'd already made a superhero flick back in 2002 and they wanted something fresh, so they opted for one of the "wild card" genres and drew historical fiction/period piece. Every team that participates is given the same three required elements -- a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue -- so that no one can start early. This year's elements were Frederick or Frieda Laino, an exchange student; a bumper sticker; and "Hey, my mom gave me that."

It took longer than usual to work out the specifics of the plot. Usually the story is formulated by a committee of B&G regulars and the script written by Sean and Curtis on Friday night, filming takes place on Saturday, and Sunday is reserved for editing and scoring. This past weekend, the boys woke up Saturday morning not knowing how their story would end, though they quickly wrapped up the screenwriting that morning. The scenario: a school for supervillains set in Cold War-era Russia.

Sean was cast as a hulking, mute villain.

Look at that sweet face. Does he look like a villain to you? He and Curtis decided that his look would be most effective if he shaved off his beard. Sean was pretty nonchalant about it, but I was freaked out. He's had a beard, or at least a goatee, for the last 17 years or so. He was clean-shaven when I met him, but I've gotten awfully used to that facial hair.

Sean in mid-shave. Ouch, he's drawn blood!

Baby face.... you've got the cutest little baby face.... It's the face I fell in love with so many years ago. Sean is unnerved by how small his mouth looks when he isn't smiling. This is a terrible picture of him, by the way -- he is much better-looking in real life.

Lesley and Curtis get their first look at Sean's clean-shaven mug.

The studio where we shot Cold War (working title). We've never had access to actual sets before, but our friend Dolly emailed Sean and said she's the property manager here and told us we had access to anything that wasn't already in use by another production. This studio, which looks like an anonymous office building, is in downtown L.A. on a small side street and turned out to be a fabulous boon to the production.

This is half of the set the boys chose to use.

And this is the other half. The low ceiling, stark lighting, dirty white tiles, and echoing effect were just perfect. Perfectly eerie.

John waits to get in front of the camera. He has the most interesting face of anyone I know, and he always commits fully to any role he plays, no matter how small.

Ready for his close-up. He was strangely attached to those stuffed animals.

Ralph, as another archvillain, and John relax before filming begins. Ralph is a total sweetheart and about as unvillainish in real life as anyone I've ever met. John -- well, he's a sweetheart, too, but I would believe it if someone told me he had a secret, not-so-sweet life. He's complex, that John.

Genie, the makeup artist, dabs some cover-up on Sean's razor burn. That thousand-yard stare of Sean's is creepier than anything in the finished film.

The villains assemble. From the left we have Sean H. as the villains' instructor, Dolly as his assistant, Josh as the exchange student, Sean, Veronika as a femme-fatalish villain, Curtis with the camera, Ralph, and John. At this point filming commenced and I was kicked out of the room, so I don't have any action shots. Sorry.

Genie applies a scar to Tricia while Veronika makes do with a more natural look. Tricia was thrilled because this was the first time she'd ever worn scar makeup, and Genie was thrilled because this was the first scar she'd made since finishing makeup school.

Tricia fully made up. This is a pretty crappy shot so you can't see that it's a switchblade she's holding to her chin and not just a pencil or something. How Tricia loved that scar! She wore it out to dinner after we finished shooting, and then home to show her husband.

Dolly, property manager extraordinaire and genuine cutie. She just happened to have black patent leather fuck me pumps and this lace-up vinyl vest in her personal wardrobe. I didn't ask.

The required prop.

So. On Sunday Sean and Curtis worked like mad to trim over an hour of footage down to seven minutes. Around midday, they showed me, Lesley and Ian (the latter of whom were acting as producers) a 12-minute cut of the film that was very funny. Over the next few hours they labored to trim five minutes out. The finished product is fun and slick, but an awful lot of good material was lost in the editing -- honestly, some of the actors' best bits ended up on the cutting room floor. But it was an acceptable length for the 48-Hour Film Project so they put it out to tape so Curtis could rush it from Pasadena to West L.A. on his motorcycle. Sean would follow with a second backup copy.

The only problem was, the first copy they made was flawed -- there were both sound and picture glitches on the tape. Maybe the tape was bad. Maybe there was a problem with the firewire. Who knows? Anyway, Curtis hopped on his bike and sped off while Sean made a copy to DVD, a perfectly clean copy. He, Norman, Veronika and I got in my car and raced out to West L.A. knowing that we would be turning in our copy late but hoping the 48HFP folks would accept the later copy as the entry.

No such luck. When we got there, they told Sean and Curtis they could screen the first, flawed copy for audiences in competition, or they could screen the late copy out of competition. Sean and Curtis tried to withdraw the film completely, but the organizers talked them out of taking it out of the project -- at least for the moment. As of right now, it's all up in the air whether or not the film, now entitled World Domination for Beginners, will be a part of this year's 48HFP competition. I'll let you know what happens...

The perception of reality

See? It's just the media that are ignoring Veronica Mars in favor of, say, The Sopranos; the internets love Veronica.

I think I'm reading that graph correctly...

Books-of-the-week

What does it say about me that these are the two books to catch my eye this sunny Monday morning?

A glut of plums

We've had pitiful output from our plum tree the past three years, and this year it appears the tree has decided to make it up to us by presenting us with what can only be described as a bumper crop. Our tree is currently so laden with fruit that the gardener had to shore up one of the overburdened branches to keep it from dragging on the ground. When our apricot tree was still among the living, the local squirrels feasted on its bounty and wouldn't give the plum tree the time of day... but this year, with no apricots yet hundreds upon hundreds of ripening plums at their pawtips, the squirrels have decided that hey, plums aren't so bad after all. I'm watching a little varmint nibble on one right now.

I myself am not fond of the plum. I don't hate 'em; they're just one of a fairly large group of foods (including eggplant, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, banana bread, stuffed grape leaves, etc.) that I will eat but prefer not to. A few years ago, before the plum drought and having forgotten my distaste for this fruit, I picked a bunch of ripe ones from the tree and made a beautiful plum cobbler. It had a rich, butter-laden streusel topping and the barest hints of cinnamon and nutmeg to enhance the plummy flavor. It filled the whole house with its sweet aroma. As soon as it came out of the oven, I scooped myself up a small bowlful and doused it with half-and-half, and I took a bite. And I thought, "You know, I really don't like plums."

But I love plum jam. It was probably the same summer I made the cobbler that I also made over 50 jars of plum jam. Our plums are the Santa Rosa variety, and they sport a deep garnet flesh that makes for a very attractive and tasty jam. I don't bother removing the peel because it softens nicely during cooking and adds a little texture. If you're interested in making jam, I recommend Linda Amendt's book Blue Ribbon Preserves, which is full of superb, award-winning recipes, and I completely endorse her recipe for Santa Rosa plum jam. If you just want to read some stories about people making jam without doing it yourself, I suggest Blue Jelly: Love Lost and the Lessons of Canning by Debby Bull and/or Well Preserved: A Jam-Making Hymnal by Joan Hassol (both out of print but worth looking for).

Next weekend I'll be helping Sean and Curtis with the 48-Hour Film Project on Friday and Saturday, but Sunday afternoon just might be the day to break out the canning equipment and put up some preserves. So, Lucy, if you were serious about wanting to learn how to make jam, you know where to reach me...

A minor brush with a minor celebrity

I'm usually pretty good at dodging customers at work; not wearing a company apron helps me move around the store incognito. Yesterday, though, I got stuck at the information desk for a good half hour, answering phones and helping customers.

Towards the end of my stint a man came up to the desk and asked if we had Cold Sassy Tree.

"Wow. I don't know if that's even in print anymore," I said, looking it up. It is in print, it turns out, and the computer said we'd received a copy last fall and it was still supposed to be on the shelf. As I was leading the customer to the paperback fiction section, he asked me if I'd ever read it.

"Oh, yeah, years ago. I barely remember it. When I first started working here people were crazy for it and we sold a ton of it."

"Did you like it?" he asked.

"Well..." I hedged. An honest answer would have been, "Eh. Not really." But since I'm in the business of selling books, I try to combine honesty with the realization that my tastes don't always coincide with others'. "It was all right. It's not really my kind of book."

The customer frowned. "I'm directing an opera based on it and I thought I should read it." By now we'd reached the shelf and I was scanning for the lone copy. It wasn't in its proper spot and it wasn't anywhere in the vicinity. I straightened up and looked at this guy closely for the first time and realized he was somebody. Not Somebody, but definitely a minor celebrity who, I believe, had once been a regular on one of the Star Trek spin-offs. I apologized for not being able to find the book and offered to order him a copy.

"Oh, no, thanks," he said. "I didn't really want to read it."

"Well, it is more women's fiction. Sort of literary lite. But hey, you're going to direct an opera! That's interesting."

He grimaced again, suggesting he wasn't all that excited about the gig. "I'm afraid the opera is going to be literary lite-lite." What a ringing endorsement for his own artistic endeavors! Then he asked for some history books on Syria, which he is going to visit in the near future, and I completely failed to find anything useful for him.

I'm a bad bookseller.

Lunchtime enlightenment

Usually I ignore my co-workers' conversations when I eat in the break room, since there's only so much babble about MySpace and Lily Allen that I can take. Every now and then, though, I eavesdrop and learn something valuable. Today, for instance, I found out that:

1. In California, employees are legally allowed one alcoholic beverage on their lunch breaks. In other words, my boss may frown when she sees me chugging that pina colada at La Fiesta Grande, but she can't fire me for it!

2. Adults are not required by law to wear bike helmets.

Somehow these laws seem linked and learning of their existence brightened an otherwise tedious lunch hour.

The only good excuse for being late

Middle of the road

So I took this silly quiz to find out if I was a good girl or a bad girl. The result? I am a "normal girl," neither very good nor very bad. The no doubt complicated mathematical calculations determined that I am actually 60% good, 40% bad -- and that most of my badness occurred in my distant past. *Sigh* It's true. I'm so not scandalous.

Grounded

Today, my boss said, "I think all of young Hollywood
needs a time-out."

Kind of wonderful

Today is just... overflowing. There is too much going on here at work, and I'm counting the minutes until I can leave.

A TV crew has been shooting a pilot here all day. All I know about it is that it's called Cubs and it's about rival cub reporters hoping to break that big story. There are lights and electrical cords and big black screens all over the sales floor, and it's nearly impossible to move around and get to anything. Add to that the fact that it's not only Tuesday (a big lay-down day for new titles) but also the first Tuesday of the month (the biggest lay-down day of any given month), the exterior of the building is in the process of being painted, the parking lot is being resurfaced, the store manager is out of town, and a class of 30 schoolchildren showed up to visit the store this morning, and you can see that things are hectic around here. I knew it was going to be a crowded day when the store controller rushed by me, muttering, "We should have asked for more money." I did what work I could on the sales floor early on, then retreated to my desk upstairs to do some work with my upcoming releases schedule.

The only cool thing about all the disruption is that Eric Stoltz is starring in this little endeavor, and he is currently sitting in our events area chatting with some cast and crew members. In general, I do not find redhaired men especially attractive, but I have always thought Eric Stoltz is quite the looker, and he's only gotten better with age: right now his hair is on the longish side, and with his glasses and wardrobe, he has that rumpled, professorial look I find irresistible. I loved him in Anaconda, where he had the good sense to get bitten by a spider and lapse into a coma for 75% of the movie. He was outstanding in an episode of Law & Order: SVU as a priest barely controlling his pedophilic urges. But he was best of all in Some Kind of Wonderful, in which he shared one of the hottest screen kisses of all time with Mary Stuart Masterson -- not the climactic clinch, mind you, but the "practice on me, your best friend" kiss in an earlier scene. Hot! Even though I'm itching to blow this joint, it will be a little hard to bid adieu to Eric; maybe he'll be back for tomorrow's filming.

It's a wrap

Good news for me: Motel 6 moved Sean and me to a marginally less seedy room on Wednesday night. Bad news for me: no more WiFi in the room (we must have been tapping into someone's network from the apartment complex across the parking lot) or on location. It didn't feel too awful to be cut off from the 'net for a few days, but it's good to be home and hooked up again.

The rest of the shoot went remarkably well. Makeup problems were resolved, and all of the actors and crew members seemed to bond. On Wednesday, I didn't see any filming as I was making blubber and a weird "traditional" Antarctic necklace, as well as running various errands. One of those errands was picking up Norman from the train station; I knew he'd be busy with his scenes in the movie, but it felt so good to have my best pal there.

Thursday and Friday we filmed at Rancho Guajome, which is a small state park featuring a traditional adobe ranch house built around a central courtyard. It's a beautiful, somewhat remote location; the grounds are landscaped with native plants and wildlife (rattlesnakes, cottontail rabbits, hawks, coyotes) abounds. All of the wedding scenes and the premarital counseling scene were shot here.

On Thursday morning I was given Peanut sitting duty. That dog has boundless energy -- for a couple of hours Norman and I played tag with him, tugged on his leash as he tugged back, and tossed sticks for him to fetch, and he never tired out, though I soon became exhausted. At one point, as I was taking him for a walk, I looked down and said, "Shit."

"What's wrong?" asked Norman.

"Shit!" I said, gesturing to the pile Peanut had left at my feet. Now I know why I do not have a dog.

The chapel at Rancho Guajome. I watched as the counseling session was filmed in its sanctuary and had to keep my hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. During one take, the bride asked the minister how long the ceremony would be, and Norman responded by asking her if such a sacred and emotional ceremony could ever be too long. "Yes," snapped the bride. "Yes, it can."

Chris, who plays the Polar American groom, freshly out of makeup.

The Right Reverend Norman, ready to smack the fear o' God into you. "It burns!"

Tony, as Aunt Gar, uses Tricia's arm to check if his nail polish has dried.

Waiting around to be called. At left is Scot, who plays Mr. Leetay, the groom's father. Of all the actors I met on this shoot, he was my favorite -- incredibly funny, kind, and self-effacing.

Rehearsing the wedding rehearsal scene. That's Ian at the right, with his back to the camera, chugging down another caffeinated beverage he doesn't need. After the assistant director announced that he had just spotted a rattlesnake, I retreated to a safer area.

The wedding cake, pre-topper. Only the bottom layer was edible -- chocolate with chocolate mousse filling; the upper two layers were styrofoam decorated with frosting. That frosting was mighty tasty. During clean-up, Ian said to toss the fake layers, so I did; Lesley later said she had promised to return them to the cake decorator, so I got to dig through a couple of bags of garbage to find them. Good times!

The makeup tent, a.k.a. the hub of the entire movie. At right, Veronica, as the sister of the groom, gets some finishing touches on her makeup.

A quick break before filming the wedding scene. That's Norman, an extra, Chris as Terry the groom, Vicki as the wedding singer, and John, her accompanist.

Norman was so convincing as the minister that, after the wedding scene was wrapped, several people asked him if he really is a man of the cloth. After hearing him exclaim, "O!" I rather wondered myself if he'd been holding out on me.

Curtis' sister and niece, Colleen and Rebecca, came all the way from Georgia to watch the filming and be extras in the wedding scene.

Jill and Josh, as the bride and the best man, take a break. Jill is a terrific actress, clearly gorgeous, funny, and loves to eat. If I were inclined that way, I'd totally be in love with her.

The power of Christ compels him.

Curtis films the wedding scene.

Sean directs the wedding scene.