Would Someone Turn Off the Faucet, Please?

Metaphorically speaking. I'm so busy right now with the feast part of "feast or famine" except the feast is lacking in serious calories (or dollars).

First let me get you up to speed with some cliffhangers from previous posts:

• The garage fixer guy measured but now has not returned a call in 2 weeks.
• The window replacement epoch turned into much drama about very little. Since I had all-day gigs with Come On Over last week, I asked Jon Burr to go and get a hatch from a junkyard. Turns out it was the wrong hatch and thank goodness Jon recognized it as such and declined. Mary called our insurance agent and it turns out that particular kind of damage is indeed covered, in total, by our policy.
• The Cucumber plant is looking sickly but the pepper plants look great. There are 4 peppers growing on the sturdiest plant.

Just finished a week of doing "Come On Over". We had a new Director, Koyalee Chanda (pronounced Kway-lee). She was terrific! She was particularly good at all the people skills. She knew everyone by name and with great facility in almost no time at all. We did an episode about shyness called "Express Yourself". It was a good episode and introduced a new character named "Joy". She may be temporarily replacing Brandi who is... pregnant with twins and beginning to show. My only complaint about the script was an occasional inaccuracy about what it feels like to be shy. (I don't thing the writers really know about this.) I feel like a bit of an expert, myself. For instance, a shy person does not run and hide when being introduced to a new person. A shy person wants to be invisible and running would draw too much attention. I was thrilled to be asked to shoot footage for one of the music videos. It was scheduled at the end of a day that turned into our longest day of shooting and by the time we got to the location, we had only an hour of daylight (that was really setting sun), to try and get about 30 shots. It was "run & gun" and so there was no careful composition or exposure. I'm a bit worried that it will not meet minimum quality standards. We'll see.

On another project, Girbe and I are taping interviews of retired cops. Yesterday we interviewed an 82-year old, African American detective. He was a very interesting guy with good stories. After the interview he was looking at a photo album full of B&W posed photos of cops. Sort of a mug shot book of the "good guys". He made little comments about nearly everyone as he remembered them. "This guy helped me with a promotion" or "This guy got really fat" or "I did not get along with this guy". My favorite comment was one of the last photos. "This guy was..." and he gestured, rocking his pinky and thumb up and down in the universal sign for "probably gay". I asked him if he was gay and he said. "Oh, he was married but he swung both ways." And then he added, "We rode together once and he said he would sleep with a man if he was clean. That was OK as long as he didn't want to sleep with me."

The down side of that shoot was that we had an hour for set up and I really need about an hour and 15 minutes for set up due to a technical problem I encountered. One of our 2 tape decks did not record the video signal.

I've also been working on a project for the Children's Museum... two projects actually. I've been working on a piece for an upcoming fund raising event involving interviews with the founders of the organization. They've been around for 10 years now. The second project is a story for Rapid Growth that I will edit this weekend for publishing next week Thursday. I've got some really nice footage.

maybe my cup is too full already. So why do i find myself writing this book in my sleep?

Finally, I had lunch with the CMC's grant writer on Thursday. She gave me an idea that I am strangely geeked about. She said that she had the guidelines from the people who publish those "_____ for the Complete Idiot" guidebook series. They pay $15,000 plus royalties on sales. I looked up their publishing list and although they seem to have a book for every dumb possibility, they have nothing like "Filmmaking for the Complete Idiot". I think I understand the complete idiot quite well and I would enjoy writing a guide book for him. First step: Come up with an outline.