Happy Mother's Day!

It's been a long week. Tuesday I did a mundane reception job. Wednesday it was back to the Boardwalk until late...but it was a latish call. Really, I'm so used to leaving the house in the middle of the night that a 9 am departure seemed like noon. The weather was on our side, finally...it was a gorgeous day and I didn't freeze to death for a change, which was nice, and we got out of there at midnight.

Friday night I did a strange call for Boardwalk - a 9 PM bus, and I thought we'd be working all night...but it turned out that we were just doing some scrappety bits that needed to be cut in, so we were out of there by 1 in the morning, after not getting to the set until 11:30...it really was the shortest call I've ever done for them. It was an odd night though. The nine or ten of us who were called for that hour got out to the set and there wasn't anyone there...empty holding, empty costume/makeup. Turns out that the first unit was running late. What was really bothering us was that Crafty wasn't there, so no coffee, no snacks, no water. They all turned up however, but I must say it seemed like a complete waste of time and money to bring ten people out there and go through the whole hair, makeup and costume bit for half an hour of shooting. But what the hell...I'm getting paid, right? Then Saturday I rehearsed the one woman show. I'm finally beginning to get a slight handle on my lines, but it's like pulling teeth. There are so goddamn MANY of them. And since my character tends to speak at random (since she's nuts), it's even harder. Yeeks.

Tomorrow I'm back to the Boardwalk with a nice late bus - 10 am - but since I'm second unit again, I'm not sure how that'll translate in terms of when I get home. Then mundane work on Tuesday, my transcription job, which is fine since I don't have to dress or anything, and rehearsal for the one woman on Wednesday evening, always presuming they don't call me for Boardwalk...they asked me to hold the rest of the week open. I may be the only person on earth who's beginning to feel she needs a vacation from her retirement.

Sarah bought me dinner tonight at the nice cafe where she's working, which was lovely. She also got me a tattoo for Mother's Day - ON HER, I hasten to add. Well, she got a tattoo of a unicycle in memory of her father, who rode one, and I facetiously said something like, "Don't I get equal time? How about a nice rose with Mom on it?" Yup.

Meanwhile, I ran across two things in the Weird But True column in the NY Post which fascinated me. One is just silliness. A 19 Briton named George Garratt has legally changed his name to Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined. Yeah, really. "I wanted to be unique," he said. Uh huh. Notice it didn't occur to him to actually DO anything to be unique, to BECOME anything remotely useful. He didn't set out to discover a cure for cancer, help the homeless, teach children or adults to read, become the best plumber in his town, or anything else that would be of value to anyone. No, he chose to do something that will indeed make him unique...as the guy who was stupid enough to do what he did. Honestly.

The other thing is sheer unadulterated idiocy. A Texas third grader was given detention for a week because she was about to eat a Jolly Rancher candy, and a teacher reported her to the principal for eating junk food. This is a week's detention.

Oh, come on. This is on a par with some recent stories about kindergarteners who have been suspended from school for forming their fingers into the shape of a gun and saying bang. (Yeah, that's happened.) If I had been caught with something I shouldn't have had in third grade (chewing gum was a big no-no, as I recall), a nun would have simply taken it away from me and said, "You know that's not allowed." And that would have been the end of it. Frankly, I'm deeply amazed that kids go to school at all any more...between the metal detectors and the bans on almost anything you can think of (also recently, there was a story of an asthmatic kid being forced by his gym teacher to take off his Medic Alert bracelet...now that's dangerous stuff), I can only assume that you get up in the morning feeling like you're going to a high security prison. Or making your way through a mine field.

People, couldn't we all just relax a minute here?

Love, Wendy