A little dose of reality

            There can be something very heartbreaking about working in production. Whether it's on a stage or on a film set, there's a feeling that's something like graduation when it's over. When you're going through it, it may feel grueling and tiresome and you question half the time why you do it, then when it ends and you have to go about finding the next job. This week, I spent my time working on a talent show going through their audition phase and it was the first time I've worked on something in the realm of reality television. Fortunately, it was one of the best experiences that I've had in the industry in years. The purpose of my position, this time, was to cater the every whim and need, big or small, the judges of the show might have. I along with my fellow team members, consisting of four other girls working under our production coordinator, we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off for five days, either preparing for the days ahead or waiting in the wings for the unexpected. The whole process of the show was something very entertaining in itself, some of those auditions were very memorable, not only because they were outstanding, but some of them were just so darn awful, you couldn't forget them if you tried. However, it wasn't just the process, but my team. The four girls I worked with had never done anything professionally before and I found myself slightly entertained by their lack of experience. It brought me back to the days when I was just starting out and I just couldn't let them go through the travesties I did without a fight for their dignity or the cost of their job.

            On the first two days of our misadventures we stocked up on supplies for our particular judges and thought we had everything that our frenzied little noggins could think of that they might want throughout the week. Half the time we were sent out last minute, scrambling for the few things we never imagined they would need, and high-tailed it back before filming started on the days that followed. I couldn't believe the amount of free stuff people were willing to give us just because we were working on this show. Every business in the area was aware of the production and because of this their business was booming. I couldn't believe my lucky stars when I found that the Starbucks around the corner was giving everyone on the crew anything they wanted at any time and refused to take any of our money. I must have saved myself a good sixty bucks this week not having to pay for my usual grande, cinnamon dolce lattes, no whip. Must be nice to be a celebrity. Even with millions of dollars, you never have to spend any of it because everyone wants to give you free stuff all the time. I got a little taste of that and it sure was sweet.

            Back at base camp, the girls were so nervous between shows that they were beginning to lose all sense of logic. Pepsi was sponsoring the show so the judges had these famed designer cups that cost somewhere around a thousand dollars each and they were made of nothing more than the type of stuff you would get at a theme park filled with your favorite fountain soda. At one point between filming, our coordinator asked one of them to save a certain judge's drink and refill it with something else that they wanted. The coordinator handed her the famed cup and told her to put the drink in a styrofoam cup that he pointed to, and then walked away. She proceeded to take the Pepsi cup and literally place the whole thing into the styrofoam cup instead of just pouring the contents into it and refilling it with something new. I just watched her in amazement as she did it, struggling with the awkwardness of the assignment. When I couldn't take it any longer, fearing that I would insult her with a burst of laughter, I helped with her predicament before our coordinator returned with the Pepsi cup nestled snuggly in a styrofoam cup with the same drink still sitting inside.

            I can't say that I didn't walk away unscathed by my own silly mistakes. However, mine spent two of us picking up the contents of a five-foot tabletop full of supplies that fell to the floor after I unsuccessfully reached for an item that was just out of reach. The table slid out of its anchor in the attempt and came crashing to the ground. I sent everything we painstakingly organized scattering across a row of seats in the stadium just as we were done taking inventory and our coordinator, of course, had just announced over our headsets that he was heading over shortly. Fortunately, we managed to get things back in order just in the nick of time.

            By the last day of filming, which consisted of two show slots with a break in between, we began to sense that last day of school feeling. We were excited for our success, but sad that it would all be over soon and we would have to go our separate ways and slide back into the real world. At that point we had just gotten into the grove of the way things ran and were beginning to know the routine and little habits of the judges so we were prepared for their every need. Things were running much smoother by the last show so we had more down time to goof around and have ourselves some hearty laughs behind the black curtains of the stage. When the final show was over it was amazing to see the clockwork behind the striking of the stage. What took twenty-four hours to construct, rig lighting and set up audio, took but five hours to tear down, pack up and reload into thirteen trucks. I would pay for tickets just to watch that whole performance again. Incredible.

            It's in experiences like that where I feel so privileged and grateful to have fallen on this path of mine. For many of us, it's the thing that drives us to continue pursuing our dreams. Even with all of the disappointments you go through and the days you worry about where your next paycheck will come from, none of that seems to matter when you're making those memories that are so unbelievable they seem almost like an out of body experience. Those are the moments that stay with you forever. Those are the things in your lifetime that you remember, not three hundred days of the year you let dawdle past you without one thing to put a staple on your day. Working on this show and meeting the people that I have, has renewed my passion for life and everything it has to offer. I'm so excited to make the most of everything, big and small and leave no wonder unturned.

Know business like show business

            One of the first jobs that I happened to land in film and television was when I was still wet behind the ears and only in my second year of film school. What I had learned, up until then, was clearly not enough for what I had in store for me those first couple of weeks on set and I definitely learned everything the hard way, eventually. The job, incidentally, came my way when a co-worker at my part-time job was double booked as a production assistant for two different prime time television shows. Woe to her. It just so happened, that while I was mopping up the floors behind her that night she got the call for the second booking and spotted me like a hunter in the woods. In a bind, she asked if I would be interested in taking her place, afraid she would loose the contact if she denied it flat out. My face said it all, and she gave the offer to the production coordinator on the phone. He accepted my enlistment, desperate for the last minute recruit, and I nearly tossed my mop to the side, wiped my sweaty brow and high-tailed it out of that store to buy my mansion in the Hollywood hills. Little did I know then the ways of show business.

            In the film world, there is a certain lingo that production people go by when referencing a shot or its style, where a person is located on set and even what a certain trailer holds when you work away from a studio lot. The list goes on but these are all very simple things to remember, however, they first must be taught, and those were things that I had yet to learn. Therefore, a film set was a complete jungle for me on that first job. There was one particular day, early in the season of the show, when I had to work on my first overnight shoot, which was set up for a night scene. It was around midnight when we were about to start filming and the production coordinator came over to me and explained what he needed me to do, "So Marcy, on the day, when you hear me cue you on the head set, let John know that he has to start walking into the shot from frame right. Okay?"

"Sure, you got it." I said with a reassuring smile.

But, as I started to walk away, I became very confused by something I was sure he had said, "on the day." What the heck? It was the middle of the night! What did he mean by, "on the day?" Were we supposed to wait until the sun rose before we started filming? I thought this was a night shot? Apparently, what I didn't know then was that "on the day" means: when the camera starts rolling. So what he actually wanted me to do, was when the camera started rolling and I was given the cue from him on the headset, I was supposed to let John know to walk into the shot. Simple right? Not then. I was completely lost on this gibberish film talk and I stood at the corner next to John looking up at the sky wondering how long it was going to take before the sun started to rise. When the director called "action!" and cameras started rolling, I got the cue for John on the headset but instead of relaying the cue to him I just stood there looking up at the sky like an idiot. Next thing I know, I hear "cut!" A minute later the coordinator comes running up to me asking if the battery on my walkie died because I didn't seem to hear a thing he told me. 

"No, it's working, but you said "on the day" and it's still dark out." 

I never heard the end of it for the rest of the season.

            About a week ago, I got a call to work on a reality-based talent show out in Rhode Island for this coming week. With little time to prepare after a shift in New York, I rushed home to pack a week's worth of clothes, grabbed my disapproving cat, then jet-propelled it through the night for a 9 am call time the next day. Somehow, I still managed to get seven hours of sleep, whoop! It's a good thing too, because if I got anything less, I know that twelve hours later I'd have wished I never met that girl, so many years ago, and took her up on that offer to fill in for her. 

            Because this was day one of our weeklong production, it was mostly a whole lot of hurry up and wait today. The thing about many union productions is that they usually don't want any non-union crewmembers doing anything the union could be accountable for. So, lucky for me, and about eleven more of us, we got to watch all the union members unload thirteen trucks of stage equipment in the pouring rain, while we drank our coffees by the loading dock feeling sorry for these poor chaps, but secretly smiling that it wasn't us this time. However, we spent four hours later being human paper shredders when their shredding machines broke down and they needed some sensitive material to make like they never existed. Karma's a bitch. Can't wait to find out what they have in store for us for the rest of the week. Whoever said that show business was glamorous, should have been shot. If I had known the truth about it when I was seven years-old, I could have saved myself the cost of a college tuition that I'll be paying for until I'm in my fifties. And forget the mansion in the Hollywood hills, they don't call us starving artists for nothing. Let's just hope I can be the exception some day.

The ancient art of tea

            A few years ago, while I was still earning my BA, I worked a part time job at a small tea company in Union Square. It was just a minimum wage job that had me slaving away in a space about the size of a coat closet, brewing tubs of hybrid tea mixtures in the sweltering heat of the oncoming summer. I took the job, not for the money, obviously, but because of how much I love the art of tea and it's physical and psychological benefits. The three young entrepreneurs that started the company, a few months prior, all came from different cultural backgrounds and happened to come together, as if by destiny, in a valiant effort to bring tea to this coffee driven city. There were many a day they had me standing in front of their retro little store, in the drug infested streets of Union Square, handing out samples of tea to passer-byers. Some of who only mistook it for pot and I nearly got mugged a few times in the effort to bring peace and harmony, through tea, to these people. When I was actually brewing the tea mixtures, even in the claustrophobia and heat of the tiny room in the back of the store, it was one of the best jobs I ever had. It was peaceful, mostly because nothing else besides the tea and I could fit in the room. Also, it felt gratifying to be making something that people could enjoy and benefit from that was so particular about its conditions and so time sensitive. It was an introverted, obsessive-compulsive, perfectionist's dream come true. But, alas, all good things come to an end and with internships and so forth I had to kiss my tubs of tea goodbye and move on to greyer pastures. However, between the few months that I was grateful to work there, and with some time I spent in teahouses in China the year before; where I saw not only the process of brewing but also the ceremony behind it, I took with me the knowledge of tea and put it to use often in my daily life.

            Last night was one of those nights that had me feigning for tea. I woke up sick as a dog and all I wanted to do was lay in my bed sipping a hot cup of jasmine tea, carefully brewed in a clay pot like a fine wine in a barrel. Ah, if only. Instead I had to drag myself to work and pray I didn't blow snot all over people whenever I sneezed. The only thing that got me through the day was the thought of sitting at home later, with my hands wrapped around that cup of tea. But first, I had to buy some. With the heat of summer floating as thick as a coat around us, the last thing I've been thinking about until I got sick was a hot beverage. So it never dawned on me to refill my jar until yesterday, when I needed it the most. And it wasn't just any tea that I needed, however, what I needed was the real deal, found only in the dungeons of China Town.

            Once I was free from the ball and chain of work, I ran through a downpour of rain and jumped on the next express train all the way to Canal Street, also known as, knock off central. You want a Rolex for twenty bucks? You got it. Want a Prada purse and wallet to match? Right this way please. Besides luxury knock offs, Canal Street is also where you can find one of China's best hidden gems in America...tea. I've always had a hard time with buying products that have been in competition with its origin companies. For instance, Coca Cola and Pepsi. I'm not a fan of the taste of Pepsi, for one thing, but it might also be physiological empathy for Coca Cola that does it. Knowing that Coca Cola came first, I feel some sort of obligation to respect the father of cola over their competitor, Pepsi. The same goes for tea. The origins of tea date as far back as 4,500 years ago, in China. Going to Lipton or Twining for tea, is therefore, out of the question, unless I have no other choice.

            After I got off the train and made my way towards the end of the dingy, overcrowded street, I reached my destination. I found this little shop years ago when I was on a trip with some of my classmates from an Introduction to Chinese class. A few of us, who had broken off from the rest of the group, walked past it when one of the girls from the area wanted to stop in. It was when I happened to wander into the basement of the store that I found this amazing, secret place that no tourist seems to have gone before. The little shop, for one thing, is full of grocery items that you would have to either know what it was already or be able to read in Chinese. So you wouldn't find many white Americans there, let alone timid foreigners who have a hard time reading English as it was, let alone the characters of the Chinese language. The basement's entrance looks like it could be where they might stock their extra bulk boxes for storage. I'm curious by nature, and it will probably be my undoing someday, but I walked down the forbidden looking steps to explore and–oh, contraire to my assumption–it was simply the lower level of the shop itself. Below was row after row of chopsticks, cups, teapots of every kind, shape or size, and the largest variety of loose-leaf tea I've ever seen. I was truly in teavana.

            When I walked in yesterday, dripping snot and soaking wet, I definitely stuck out, as usual, for being the tallest and whitest woman in the store and then for knowing my way around like it was my grandmother's shop. After I walked down the tiny stairs, meant for little Asian feet, without breaking my neck, I bee-lined to the back wall and was greeted by my favorite China man, who I can never understand. He smiled timidly, surly not positive that I've been there a dozen times before and watched as I perused the selections for anything new and found that beloved tea of mine. Yes! Just what I was looking for, golden silk silver hook jasmine tea. The crème della crème of jasmine green tea. Just what the doctor ordered. I asked my Chinese friend for a two oz. measure to get me through the weekend and thanked him with the few words of Chinese I could still remember from college. Then I skipped all the way over to the register, paid for my tea and was out the door and on my way home to my cozy little bed and a steamy pot of jasmine tea to make Marcy all better again. 

A scientific theory

            I recently read somewhere, that all living things are made of energy and that we have the ability to give and take our energies to and from the things around us as well. The people we love and care about fill with more motivation and strength when we show them how we feel. And, so the opposite happens when we neglect or put people we don't like down. They become depressed and seem to physically shrink from the energy that was snatched from them. The story that I read was fiction but based on an actual theory still studied today. In the story, these scientists plant some fruits and vegetables in one field and they release their positive mental energies by talking to the plants and nurturing them like they were their human offspring. In another field, they planted the same vegetation in the same conditions but they did only what was necessary and nothing more. No talking or releasing their mental energies to these plants. After a few weeks they noticed that the plants that were talked to and given that extra mental attention grew twice as large as the plants in the field that were ignored. This got me thinking. This may just be a story of fiction based on someone's theory but I wondered if maybe there really was some truth to this. I'm open-minded. So, I decided to put this theory to the test.

            About a week and half ago, I drove over to the nearest Home Depot and bought myself two pots, both about 8x3 divided in eight sections, potting soil and two kinds of seeds, basil and lavender. I was excited, this felt like grade school science fair all over again. When I got home, I put my green thumb on and went about planting my seeds. First, I started with the pot where I was to be putting all of my mental energy. I opened the packet of basil seeds and as I poured out a dime size amount into my palm, I whispered lovingly to them while Gizmo sat beside me looking very confused. Then I went ahead and dropped two seeds into four of the eight sections of the pot and continued to do the same with the lavender in the other four. Tucked nicely in their beds and after singing them a lullaby to sleep I put them on the windowsill and started on the next pot.

            I couldn't help but feel like Cruella Deville when I started on these poor seedlings. I suppose for this experiment to work properly, I had to go the other extreme, mentally abuse them. My heart was torn. I secretly want these sad little seeds to grow big and strong but I had to put up the air that I didn't. So I told them they were useless and would never amount to anything with a frigid tone in my voice. Then I dropped the seeds in disgust into their little dirt coffins and threw them onto the sill next to the others. I felt like an awful waste of energy after that and walked out of my kitchen with a lump in my throat and tears welling in my eyes. Every morning after planting my harvest, I would go to the sill to observe their progress and coo at the pot that needed to soak up my energy, "Good morning my darlings. Are you growing for mamma? Yes you are. Such good little boys mamma has."  Then I would give them all a little spritz of water and look coolly at the red headed stepchildren in the pot next to them, "Good for nothings. I never should have planted you." I'm such a sucky person. After a week, I noticed that both pots were growing exactly the same, tall, strong and leafy green. However, the lavender had yet to sprout from either pot.

            This morning, I went to check on the plants of my obsession and to my surprise, a lavender seed had sprouted! However, it wasn't from the pot that got all of my love and attention, it came from the poor, abused saps that sat in the pot next to them. I couldn't believe my eyes. They showed me, I thought. Good for them! Way to deter and prosper in the face of difficulty and opposition! Then I looked over at the princes of New York in the pot next to them, "useless, why can't you be more like your brothers!" So much for proving that theory right. 

Round three...The usual suspects

            I think I can actually feel myself starting to age. The last time I partied like a rock star was nearly a decade ago. That's when I was fresh meat in the city and still in college. I don't remember it being so hard to wake up the next day though, then sitting through classes for the next five hours. Maybe I'm going through the first stages of dementia? When I woke up Sunday morning, after only three and a half hours of sleep, I took a gander at myself in the mirror. Yup, I looked exactly how I felt, not very pretty. Dragging myself to work hoping to restore my bank account, after nearly putting it in the red over the weekend, was one of the hardest things I've done physically and mentally in a long time. I was swimming in a fog all morning and three cups of coffee was as useful to me as drinking air. I think my boss was feeling bit sorry for me, because he was unusually helpful and asked if I wanted to go early. I should come into work looking like death more often. Somehow, I made it through the few hours I was there, met up with my friend Erin, who was as perky as ever, (I hate her, and her birthdays) and we made our way back to our apartments to get ready for the last stand. Two nights down and one more to go. Oy.

            Later that evening, Erin and I had regrouped with our friends Megan and Nichole, at their Park Avenue apartment and went about the final touches to our ensembles for the night. As I was sliding on my 3-inch heels from the previous night, I realized that my big toes were as numb as nuggets. What on earth was wrong with my feet? I'm writing this blog three days later and I'm just now getting a tingling sensation and some feeling back in my toes. I wonder, is this normal or am I going to walk around the rest of my life feeling big toeless?  As much as I loved the look of my new shoes, I would have loved to sport me some flip-flops for the evening, but the girls would have none of that and I found myself putting on the stilts once again. Walking to a cab like a Tyrannotitan in my heels, the ladies and I head downtown for another night in Chelsea.

            When we got out of our cab we were standing in front of 1OAK (1 Of A Kind). A bit presumptuous, but a clever name nonetheless. On the guest list there, we had ourselves quick entry and free drinks all night. Which, was great because I wasn't at work long enough, that day, to cover the amount of money I had already spent on drinking all weekend as it was. For a club that is known to house many celebrity VIPs, I was surprised they would want to go to a place that was a bit too claustrophobic and lacked privacy. We sat with a group of about five other girls at our table, which faced a wall with a large canvas that confused the hell out of me. It was as big as the wall was high and had a small boy in the center wearing a red blindfold holding the reins of two horses on each side of him. I sat there half the time in a daze trying to make sense of it then moved on to survey the populace of the club. I don't know if it was because I was exhausted at this point or just bored, but I was not at all up to grinding with the crazies that were slithering on the dance floor. However, I was very amused by watching the guys in the place from our ostrich-leather banquette between the dance floor and the bar.

            The scene was full of the all the typical personalities I find in men who frequent these clubs. At the bar, I spotted the recluse stalker. Wearing his hat low to cover his eyes as they have latched on to the girl with the big blonde hair and large breasts shaking her bootie on the dance floor. Waiting like a lion in the grass for the guy next to her to take a leak so he can slide right in there and drag her away. On the floor next to us was a small group of young foreign guys with their button ups looking mildly uptight with an air of nonchalance, but secretly scared shit of girls, even though they want them. At the table across from us were the guys who are too cool for school, drinking their vodkas on the rocks, arms spread wide across the backs of their banquettes, marking their territory around the girls beside them. And, there, making their way through the dance floor, I was wondering where those guys were? The ones who had too much to drink and start walking up to random girls whispering sweet nothings that make sense into their ears. I love those guys. They make me giggle from my comfy couch. No, thank you. Like my mother always said... "It's better to be alone then in bad company." Right as always, Mom.

            A few hours later the girls had had enough and my dogs were barking, so we set out in a cab and made our way through the streets of NYC and back to our castles of brick and barred windows for some much needed beauty sleep. We managed to get through another one of Erin's epic birthdays in one piece. Now, we spend the rest of the year recovering for the next one. I can hardly wait;)