Saturday, May 07, 2005

Ice Cube's got nothing on me...

Hey kids,
You think Ice Cube has had some interesting Fridays? Let me tell you about mine.

I'll begin with a back-story that begins on Thursday. Good friend and former TV production student at CSUSB Jovan Sales received the great opportunity to direct a music video and my boss, Mike (http://www.videofp.com/) gave him permission to use the facilities in the CSUSB TV lab (http://videolab.csusb.edu/). So Jovan & I spent the better part of Thursday afternoon setting up the studio, ie: set setup, lighting, blocking, camera shots, etc. Jovan had some great ideas and I was excited to be a part of it, and meet the hip-hop band, THC (no website or 411 has been made available to me about them).

Okay, so along comes Friday morning, I wake up at 6:15. I gotta dress up spiffy because I'm lecturing in the morning for Comm 120 and I'm hitting the town with my good friend Ezequiel that night, as I have been for the last 2 months of Fridays. So I look good; black shirt, black pants, silver tie and a black sports coat. Ladies' heads have been turning when I walk by.

Here's the schedule: Open the TV lab at 8 am so Jovan can set up. Lecture from 9:20 to 10:30 to a bunch of freshmen and sophomores about using visual aids in their speeches. I help Jovan
until my 12 noon meeting with Dr. Heisterkamp to critique my lecture. After a quick food break, it's more video shoot until I shut down the studio at 6 pm so I can get to the Coyote Chronicle office and help them finish this week's issue. Whenever we finish that, it's off to Highland to pick up Ezequiel and we proceed to hit the casino, titty bars, watering holes or wherever the evening takes us.

Everybody with me so far? Good.

I get to campus at about 10 till 8 and there's Jovan who, since 7:30 has been planning his shoot in his head. Good man. Shortly after 8, my cohorts and partners in crime, Celeste & Christina (http://videolab.csusb.edu/SA_s/sa_s.htm) show up. The members of THC and The Flaming Boys start trickling in and we're ready to shoot but there's one thing missing: Jovan's crew.

What? Well... I guess it's hard to find good help these days. Can you believe it? Everyone who agreed to help pulled a no-show, except for the lovely Terry Saenz, who played a convincing news anchor by the way (I played the well-dressed weatherman, woo-hoo!). Anyway, thank God for Celeste & Christina, because they were able to help out while I was lecturing. During all this, Big Mike was busy in court arguing a bogus parking citation (he won by the way).

I split to lecture and it goes okay, it was a Friday morning and the students did not want to be there. But they paid attention and hopefully learned something. Dr. Heisterkamp informs me that he had something come up and must cancel the noon appointment. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because while this was going on, not much was happening in the TV lab.

To my dismay, not one shot was taken while I was gone because of missing personnel. So the entire morning was lost, and we didn't start shooting until after 11:30. Katie Colorado waltzed in around 2, but didn't stay long. Nikki never came at all. After that, it went smooth. Celeste & Christina proved to be invaluable because they both had stuff to do for classes, and sacrificed them to help out on the shoot. God bless 'em. I'd date them both if they'd have me. Oh well.

To make a long story short, we finished up around 5 pm with some great dailys. I played the weatherman who kept getting pushed around by this rap group that takes over a news broadcast. Of course, everyone became enamoured with Miss Terry, but the weatherman gets knocked on his ass repeatedly. Way cool, man. Javon did very well with this shoot and I'm proud to have been a part of it.

On to the Chronicle where multiple mop up jobs and plastic surgury was required on more than one section. For some reason, the editors are leaving before they get the final "okey-dokey" from Jason, Shayanne & Professor Smart. And guess whose job it is to clean up the remains... you guessed it, your old pal the Turzman. It's all good, Jason and Shayanne bought me Chinese food. Good egg-rolls.

I go home, perform a quick toilette, stick a wad of cash in my money clip and alert Zeke of my pending arrival. At his house, we warm up with a couple shots of Jagermeister. He showed me some makeup affects from his next motion picture (which has been picked up by a major producer, mad props to Ezequiel) and the characters look great. I think the producer is gonna fast-track this project so Junior might be in the middle of his big break, and I'm there to watch it happen. Check out his work at the Broken Pictures website (http://www.brokenpictures.com).

We pass on the titty bar, for reasons unclear to me, and head to the San Manuel Indian Casino and Bingo Parlor where I turn $100 into $225 in twenty minutes at the blackjack table. That's right, one shoe and I'm up more then a hundy. I bought the next few rounds of drinks.

We caught some live music in the lounge but the lady action was lame, so we split on the casino and made our way to the Boiler Room in Redlands (once again passing on the titty bar for reasons unclear to me), but it's packed full of posers and chumps clinging onto every hunney in the joint. Picture Zeke and me, dressed like a couple of high-rollers with a few c-notes to spare, and the ladies are hanging with a bunch of scrubs. One girl even had the balls to ask us for cigarettes for her and her boyfriend. Can you believe it? Big brass balls. Her name was Claire, I think. She told us her name, but by then I had tuned her out. Too bad, she was hot. Anyway, fuck Claire, Claire sucks.

We bail on the boiler room for some dive across the parking lot where Zeke and I happen across (to our ire) Little Miss Jaime, who stood us up the week before after having a great time with us the week before that. Not even a phone call to tell us she made other plans, and not even a return on our calls. It turns out her loverboy from Las Vegas had driven the 400 + miles for a booty-call, and Jaime was more than happy to oblige. Imagine that, Zeke and I right here in town to worship her like a goddess and she's hooked on some scrub from Sin City. He's not even a roller, he's an architect.

We stumble across the two of them, drunk as skunks, and all of a sudden she's hanging on us like there was never a problem. She stood us up and all of a sudden she's coming across like the fucking mayor's wife. Vegas-boy didn't like the attention he lost to us because he wanted to leave. Good timing guy, it was last call anyway.

Zeke invites them to his pad to help us finish the bottle of Jagermeister. Jaime reluctantly accepts, knowing that dreamboat wasn't into it. But the point is, she said yes. I told Zeke on the way that there was no way they were coming. Even if Jaime really wanted too, there was no way the boyfriend was up for it. I said they're gonna bail without a phone call and go to his hotel.

Zeke calls her cell and she says "Oh sorry, we're not coming over. We're going to the hotel." My own words repeated over speaker phone verbatim.

We shot some more Jager and I went home, rolled in at about 3:30 in the morning.

So there it is, a day in the life. Do you think Ice Cube would like this story for another Friday sequel? Who knows. Maybe it doesn't sound as fun when translated to a blog. I guess you had to be there.

Anyway-
brand new here at Turzman Central, Webmaster Steve has provided us with a message board. Register at http://turzman.com/phpbb/ and we'll talk about anything you want, divided by topic. So we've got the new message board, the guestbook (thanks to all that have been participating) the Turzman PhanFone hotline at (909) 881-3654 and of course, the electronic mail system: mike@turzman.com.

"Don't come once, come often."
-Pornstar Alexa Rae to me in a dream last night.

g'nite all.
m.

No comments: