11:17 am - Tues 5/18/04
Mor e Thoughts From The Pocket Journal

(At work sometimes, I write down a million little things I want to write about in more detail when I get home. The following are some things that started out in my "pocket journal".)

Tues 5/18/04 (8:22 a.m.)

I've forgotten to write about this, and I think I should--There was more to the Time Warner spot than I previously covered here in D-land.

On the first day of the shoot, there was an actor there in a lab coat, playing a CSI guy.

I don't know what he was doing, because the only script I saw was the one I've already written about in here, and there was nothing about "CSI Guy" in it, but he shot something in another building, while I had a break between the stuff we did in the afternoon and the stuff where I was riding around in the squad car (You'd think I would have been curious enough to check out what was going on, but I didn't know how much shoot was still ahead of me at that point, so I was trying to use the break to rest up).

On the second night of the shoot, when I had a 6:00 p.m. call, there were a couple women who were finishing up shortly after I got there; Once again, I didn't know exactly what they'd been doing, but I overheard something about "group therapy".

I'm hoping this isn't HBO all over again, where I'm all excited about having lines and being the "lead", only to basically get busted down to "extra". I don't think that's gonna happen�I just had too much to do on this one�but wanted to give you all a "heads up", in the event you see the spot in a couple weeks and are surprised I made it sound like so much more than it is.

(Speaking of HBO...Now that I think about it, I would never have known there was other stuff in the "Watercooler" commercial if I hadn't actually auditioned for one of those parts first. And I think this Time Warner thing was actually a three-day shoot, but I worked more than anyone else. But I'm getting myself all paranoid here, so I'm gonna just stop this right now...)

Last night at work, I read the Time and Newsweek cover stories on the prisoner abuse scandal.

It seems like the more I read about it, the uglier it gets. Just really nasty business, with a lot to be angry and upset about any way you slice it (For example: The higher ups had apparently been hearing accounts of prisoner abuse since Afghanistan�from the Internation Red Cross and Amnesty International�and were content to just sit on their hands, hoping the public would never find out).

But in the midst of this profoundly unpleasant story are a couple things to feel positive about: As tough as it must have been to do, someone "on the ground floor", so to speak, did eventually speak up (Though I wonder how far would he have gotten without the pictures?).

And while it's hard to shake some of the photos that have been shown�and there are even worse pictures out there the public will probably never see�there were soldiers that refused to participate. I think there's some measure of comfort to take from that.

Again, this is something I don't want to dwell on, but I'm having a hard time letting it go.

Meant to write about this when it happened, a couple weeks ago...

In my apartment building, if you want to walk down to the laundry room (Instead of taking the elevator), you have to walk through the parking garage.

Well, I was coming from the laundry room, walking through the parking garage, when I saw a motorcycle�a Yamaha Vulcan�parked nearby (I'm not a "gearhead", so I can't tell you the specs, but it's a really cool-looking bike).

I knew I shouldn't, but I've been tempted to do this for months now (Whenever I've seen a really good looking motorcycle)�I looked around to see if anyone was coming, and when I didn't hear anyone, I hopped on. Just "to see what it felt like".

And it was perfect, I felt like it was built with me in mind; It was just the right size, with a low-slung seat (I have very short legs, but I could straddle the bike with both feet flat on the ground), and handlebars in a perfect, comfortable position.

For a moment, as "Born To Be Wild' played in my head, I was enjoying my little fantasy. But then I became afraid the owner would show up any second, saying "Hey @#$! What are you doing on my @#%! motorcycle?".

So I started to get off. And as I did, my right heel caught on the seat, I lost my balance, and fell on my ass.

You ever have a moment where, even though there's no one around to see you, you feel really embarrassed over how stupid you must look? Well, this was one such moment for me.

But after I got over feeling like an idiot, I had to laugh. "Hey, it turns out people are right," I thought to myself. "Motorcycles really are dangerous!".

I'd just had my first "motorcyle accident" and the damned thing wasn't even moving.

While at Cary's on Saturday night, I was up watching tv, and caught the very end of Saturday Night Live.

The Olsen Twins were hosting, and as they did the sign-off, one of them (I don't know which is which) said, "And remember�We're �legal' in just four weeks!".

Maybe this is me being hopelessly old-fashioned, but I thought that was a bizarrely tacky thing for them to say on national television.

I know somewhere on the web�probably a couple different places on the web�there are "counters" counting down the magical day when the Olsen Twins will be legally available to all of us, from horny fratboys to dirty old men (I think there's also a website that lets you bet on which underage starlet will be the first to pose naked in Playboy), and maybe it was "hip" of them to show they know that, but I found myself addressing the tv: "So, Olsen Twin�whichever one you are--what are you saying? In four weeks, you'll be spreading your legs for anyone who asks? Should I should give you a call?".

(For the record, I'm not actually attracted to the Olsen Twins. I tend not to be attracted to the spectacularly untalented, for one thing. And even though they aren't nearly as freakish-looking as they were as children, there's still a touch of "troll doll" about the two of them.)

This past Friday, Late Show with David Letterman shot their show for that night at 4:00 a.m.

I'm a big Letterman fan, but I didn't really "get it". I mean, it's not like they shoot the show at 11:35 p.m. anyway, so who really cares when they shoot it? It struck me, as I watched, that if they didn't keep reminding you that it was 4:00 a.m., there'd be nothing to distinguish that show from any other show that had been done that week (I did like the bit where Amy Sedaris took us on a tour of her neighborhood. But I just love Amy Sedaris).

Don't know exactly why I felt the need to write about this. But I did.

Charisma Carpenter�of Buffy And Angel fame�is on the cover of this month's Playboy.

When I first heard she was going to pose in Playboy, I had mixed emotions�She's a beautiful woman, and I'm definitely pro-beautiful naked women ("Pro" enough to check out the pictures online, anyway. Not "pro" enough to actually buy the magazine), but I found it depressing that someone I really like was selling herself so short.

I know this sort of thing doesn't have nearly the "stigma" it used to, but in a way, that's part of the problem for me�It's just so pedestrian.

And "stigma" or no, I still don't think it's the kind of thing a serious person does (I imagine Ms Carpenter will get some attention from it, but I doubt it's the kind of attention she really wants if she wants a real acting career).

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